Zymotic
by MegTDJ
Summary: When Jack is stricken with an alien virus, he finds he can no longer distinguish past from present and fact from fiction. Gen.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Zymotic  
Author: MegTDJ  
Category: Angst/drama, hurt/comfort  
Rating: T  
Pairing: None; Jack/Daniel friendship. Slight mention of Jack/Sara, Daniel/Sha're.  
Spoilers: Anything and everything up to early season 7.  
Summary: When Jack is stricken with an alien virus, he finds he can no longer distinguish past from present and fact from fiction.  
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1, its universe and its characters are not mine. The story itself is, however, so please don't archive without my permission.

Author's notes: Phew, this was hard to write! I've never written a fic this long entirely from Jack's POV before, so I hope I did the character justice. There isn't enough Jack fic being written these days, so for those of you who have missed him... here ya go! I hope you enjoy. :)

The title, Zymotic, refers to a type of infectious disease, and can also mean "of, relating to, or causing fermentation", and since Jack has an infectious disease and is in a constant state of fermentation (or agitation) through the whole fic, I figured it fit. But really, I just wanted to be the first to have a novel uploaded to the SG novel archive under the letter Z. ;)

Many thanks to Misty and Kerri for the constant encouragement and kicks in the butt, and to Heleen for providing me with the perfect soundtrack when inspiration was running dry. You guys rock!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

**Zymotic**

**  
Chapter 1**

The first thing he heard was a scream. That was shortly followed by a scuffling sound and voices whispering above his head.

"Take him! Quickly!"

Someone grabbed him around the waist and hauled him to his feet. He couldn't open his eyes, but he was awake and aware enough to realize that this probably wasn't a good thing.

He tried to fight against whoever it was, but there must have been more than one of them as his arms were soon pinned to his sides and he felt himself being dragged helplessly along. "No," he groaned as soon as his voice would cooperate.

"Shh!" one of the men hissed in his ear. "We are trying to help you."

Help him? What the hell was this? Where the hell was he?

His eyes finally opened as he was lowered onto the ground again. Though it wasn't the same hard ground this time... it was soft, like he was lying on a cloud.

A cloud? He gave his head a sharp shake to help clear his thoughts, and then looked up at the two men who were now hurriedly pushing on a huge wooden door to close it. They were in a smallish room of some kind, dark except for a primitive torch attached to one wall, and bare of furnishings except for the downy blankets arranged as a bed underneath him. Nothing rang any bells of recognition in his head, and it was starting to creep him out.

"Who are you?" he asked as the men closed the door and turned back to face him. "Where am I?"

"I am Marzun," one of them said, "and this is Derya. I know you are feeling frightened and abandoned right now, but you need not fear. We are friends. We will help you."

"Help me?" He struggled to sit up, though he felt as though he could pass out again at any moment. "If you want to help me, get me out of here."

The two men looked at each other in confusion. "Where... would you go?" Derya asked.

That was a good question. Where _would_ he go?

He raised a hand to his forehead as he started to feel progressively dizzy, and soon Marzun was crouching by his side, offering him water from a small bowl. He took a few sips, but then pushed the man away.

Marzun stood up and looked down on him sympathetically. "You must be feeling very disoriented," he said. "That is often one of the first effects. Your mind will soon clear, and you will remember everything."

"First effects? Of what?"

"Of the Death. You have been stricken, and so you have been sent here to us... to the Colony. Think carefully. You will remember."

Death? Stricken? Colony? No, no, no, there was some mistake...

"Do you remember your name?" Marzun asked.

His name? Of course he knew his name. It was right on the tip of his mind...

"Do not rush him, Marzun," Derya murmured. "Can you not see he is in shock?"

Shock... yes, that would explain it, he thought. But he didn't have the luxury of giving in to shock. He had to think... think about where he'd been, what had happened leading up to arriving in this place...

"Jack," he said. "My name is Jack."

And then it all came flooding back.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"Jack? I, uh... I think we're in trouble."

Jack rolled his eyes and gave a frustrated sigh as he leaned against the bars of his cell. "Yeah, I kinda noticed that, Daniel. But hey, thanks for the confirmation."

"What are we going to do?" Daniel asked. Even though his cell was a few feet away from Jack's and the light coming through the room's one window did nothing but scatter creepy shadows across the floor, Jack could see that Daniel's face was pale and strained. He was genuinely scared. As they all were.

Jack's only reply was another sigh. He didn't need to say it out loud for the rest of his team to know the answer - there was nothing they _could_ do but wait.

"How are you feeling, sir?"

Jack glared at Carter, which wasn't easy given that her cell was the farthest from his. "I feel fine," he said. "I _am_ fine. I barely even touched that guy. How could I have caught this... this..."

"Death," Daniel said quietly.

"Very helpful, Daniel. Thank you."

Daniel shook his head and stepped away from the bars of his cell to escape the reach of Jack's glare. He was being so damn depressed and mopey that Jack was ready to throw something at him.

"Will you get over feeling guilty, for God's sake?" Jack said. "Save it for if I actually do get sick. Which is not going to happen, by the way."

"I'm the one who insisted we stay an extra day to visit those ruins," Daniel said from somewhere in the shadows of his cell. "If we hadn't..."

"The crazy plague guy wouldn't have taken offense to us raiding his hideout, and we wouldn't have ended up in quarantine," Jack finished for him. "But if it hadn't been us who'd found the crazy plague guy, it would have been a bunch of school kids who wanted to turn those ruins into a playhouse, and they wouldn't have had the means of bringing the guy down like we did. Personally, I think saving a bunch of kids' lives is worth spending a few hours locked up, don't you?"

Daniel didn't answer, which Jack took to mean that he'd made his point. He nodded in satisfaction and went back to leaning against the bars in silence.

"Have you yet to experience any hallucinations, O'Neill?" Teal'c asked a few moments later.

Jack growled in annoyance and kicked the bars of his cell. "Will you people shut up about the whole Death thing already?" he snapped. "Trust me, if I start hallucinating and going out of my mind, you'll all be the first to know."

He stomped over to the dark side of his cage and sat down on the narrow bench that was supposed to serve as a bed. "Bad day," he muttered as he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. "Very, very bad day."

"Mmm," said a voice from somewhere close beside him in the dark. "And it's only going to get worse."

Jack's blood ran cold as the deep, distorted voice echoed through his cell, but he refused to open his eyes. It couldn't be real. It was his imagination. All this talk about hallucinations was causing his mind to play tricks on him.

"Are you alright, O'Neill?" the voice asked in amusement. "You look scared to... death."

Jack finally opened his eyes at the sound of the cruel laughter he'd come to know well. He turned his head in the direction of the voice just in time to see a pair of dark eyes flash as only those belonging to evil snakeheads do.

Baal.

Jack cried out and jumped to his feet, but he knew he had nowhere to run.

Baal leered at him as he slowly rose to his feet, playfully toying with the knife he held in his hand. "Shall we begin again?"

Jack was seized with an intense feeling of terror as the memories of being tortured by this Goa'uld a year earlier suddenly flooded into his mind. He felt an overwhelming need to get as far away from that face as possible. "Somebody let me out of here!" he yelled, grabbing the bars of the cell and shaking them with all his might. "Let me the hell out of here!"

"Please! Stop! You will only hurt yourself!"

Jack turned around and swung at the body connected to the hand that had just grabbed his shoulder. Baal could kill him again if he wanted, but there was no way he was going down without a fight this time.

To his surprise, however, it wasn't Baal's face that was staring back at him.

"Please, calm down," Marzun said. "I mean you no harm. Whatever you thought you saw, it was not real."

Jack gaped at his surroundings in disbelief. He was back in the little room with his two nervous companions, even though he could have sworn he'd been in the quarantine room with the rest of SG-1 just seconds before. "I..." he began, but he hadn't a clue what to say.

"Believe me when I tell you," Marzun said gently, "this is real. These walls, these blankets, myself and Derya... for now, we are all that is real. Everything else is untrue. It is the Death taunting you with what is not really there."

Jack blinked as he watched Marzun's mouth moving with the words he spoke, but somehow his brain just wasn't taking it in. Real... untrue... Death... those were the only words he seemed to recognize. He could feel himself sinking again as Marzun rushed forward to catch him and ease him down onto the blankets.

"There," Marzun said, his voice sounding more and more distant as Jack's eyes drifted closed. "Rest now. You will understand soon enough."

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Marzun was right. Before twenty-four hours had passed, Jack understood all too well. If the effects of the disease weren't apparent enough just from Jack's own hallucinations and disorientation, he only had to listen to the frequent screams and frightened cries coming from outside their tiny quarters to get a clue.

As much as he dreaded going out there, Jack knew that he couldn't deny the reality of his situation forever. After a few hours of rest, Jack convinced Marzun to take him out into the colony while Derya slept.

Colony... that wasn't the word Jack would have used to describe this place, he realized as he stepped out of the little room and looked around him. It looked more like a dungeon or a prison with its greasy stone walls and floor, dark tunnels that looked like gaping mouths opening out of the main square, thick wooden doors covered with long, deep scratch marks, and complete lack of windows. The occasional wall-mounted torch was the only source of light, and all they really did was cast eerie shadows on the walls and make the place seem even more claustrophobic and terrifying.

"What the hell is this place?" he muttered.

"This is the Colony," Marzun said, though Jack had intended the question to be rhetorical. "This is where those stricken with the Death are sent so that we do not infect others."

Jack snorted, thinking about the leper colonies he'd heard about back on Earth. "I guess it shouldn't surprise me that this place is such a dump," he said. "Your people obviously don't believe in making someone's last days as comfortable as possible."

Marzun gave him an odd look. "It is not possible for us to be... comfortable," he said, as though the idea were completely foreign to him. "They send us food and clothing, but beyond that there is nothing anyone can do. No one from the outside can enter here, or they would die. Once one of the Dead touches one of the living, they are finished."

"Yeah, I got that," Jack said, subconsciously rubbing the arm that the crazy guy had grabbed for no more than a second. He shuffled his feet nervously and looked around at the doors that were near their own. "So," he said, "where is everybody?"

"It is night," Marzun said. "They are sleeping."

"Night?" Jack repeated. "How the hell can you tell? We're underground, right?"

Marzun nodded gravely. "You will see once the Death progresses," he said. "We do not need the sun to tell us the time of day. We know it instinctively."

Jack was almost impressed for a second before he remembered what the other effects of this thing were. "So, even though you're hallucinating and going insane, at least you're never late for supper, right?" he said wryly.

Marzun was about to reply when a sudden eerie cry tore through the air, chilling Jack to the bone.

"Quickly," Marzun said, pushing Jack back towards their quarters. He opened the door, shoved Jack inside, and slammed the door shut behind them. Seconds later, the sound of heavy, rapid footsteps went by, accompanied by animal-like panting and howling.

"What the hell was that?" Jack asked anxiously once all was silent again.

"That was Jumas," Marzun replied. "If you ever hear that sound while you are outside this room... run. He does not leave his quarters very often, but when he does... he believes he is a wild animal, and he is very difficult to control."

"I'll bear that in mind." Jack rolled his eyes and sank back down onto his blankets. "So... this is what I've got to look forward to, is it?" he said wearily. "Turning into a wild animal like that guy?"

Marzun shook his head and sat down on the floor beside him. "Not everyone is as weak-minded as Jumas," he said.

Jack studied Marzun closely in the dim light for a few moments before he spoke again. "Speaking of which," he said slowly, "why is it that you and Derya seem so... sane? In the last five hours, I've had at least half a dozen hallucinations, all of which have scared the crap out of me, yet you guys have been perfectly lucid the whole time." He glanced over at Derya, who was still sleeping soundly in his corner of the room. "And how come he can sleep peacefully through The Night of the Living Dead over there?" he added.

Marzun sighed and passed a hand over his eyes as though he was reluctant to answer. "Derya and I..." He paused and shook his head. "We have been here for many years," he continued. "We were both stricken as youths, and we have already suffered through the hallucinations and the terror and the rage. Now our minds are calm... we are near the end."

"You mean... this thing just... plays itself out, and then you're fine?" Jack asked, confused.

"After many years of suffering, if one manages to survive so long, the Death offers us a few months of peace before claiming us forever."

Jack's heart sank down into his shoes. "So... you're about to die," he said.

Marzun nodded. "Yes. That is why we brought you here, Jack... to protect you from the others until you were able to fend for yourself. Caring for the newly stricken is the duty of those who have reached the peace. Once we are gone, this room will be yours."

Jack grimaced. "Thanks, but I think I'd rather get out of here and go home."

"You cannot go..."

"Yeah, I get it, if I leave here I'll just make other people sick," Jack said impatiently. "But you don't understand... I'm not even from this planet! My people have advanced medicine, one of the things your people have been trying to trade with my people to get their hands on. If I go back to my world, chances are they'd be able to cure me."

Marzun looked surprised and almost hopeful for a moment, but then his look of sympathy and resignation returned. "Even if this were true," he said gently, "there is no way out of the Colony."

"If there's a way in, there's a way out," Jack said firmly.

Marzun shook his head. "The way in is protected by a force shield that only allows one-way passage. Many have tried to pass through it to freedom, but none have survived. Either the shield itself kills them, or the guards on the other side shoot them down."

"There are guards here?" Jack asked in surprise. "I thought you said nobody ever comes near the place."

"The guards are protected by two shields," Marzun said. "Their weapon fire can penetrate both with no difficulty. They do not need to come near us in order to kill us."

Jack sighed and rubbed the top of his head in frustration. "Great," he mumbled. "This is gonna be a breeze."

"I know it is hard for you to accept," Marzun said, laying a sympathetic hand on Jack's arm, "but this place is now your home. These people are now your people. It may seem like a terrible place to you right now, but... there is kindness here. This is the road we all must travel before reaching the final peace."

Jack gritted his teeth against the sarcastic retort that rose in his throat. He knew Marzun was only trying to help, but what he was saying sure wasn't doing the trick. Staying in this God forsaken place until he came to feel that it was "home" was the last thing he planned to do. There had to be some way out, and he was determined that he was going to find it.

"We should both get some more rest," he said, positioning himself as comfortably as he could on his pile of blankets.

He had a busy day ahead of him.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Jack awoke to the sound of gunfire.

"What the hell?" he muttered as he tried to regain his bearings. For a moment he couldn't remember where he was or what had happened, but then he saw them.

Replicators.

"Sir, we've set the autodestruct," Carter's voice crackled through his radio. "You have less than five minutes to tell us to override. Do you copy?"

"Roger that!" Jack yelled, his voice swallowed up by the shotgun fire all around him. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his own weapon, and opened fire just as one of the little buggers was taking a flying leap at his head.

He kept one eye on the blast door even as he fired shot after shot at the Replicators, knowing that Daniel was in trouble on the other side. He never should have let Daniel go in there. He should have known it was a dumb idea to try to talk a robot out of doing whatever it damn well wanted to do.

"Colonel," Carter's voice crackled through the radio again. "I think Reese is losing control. At least one of the Replicators down here started to act on its own."

Jack knew he couldn't wait any longer. He headed over to the blast door, ready to charge through as soon as the hole had been cut.

"Jack? Jack, please! You must not open the door!"

"Get out of my way!" Jack shouted, shoving aside the airman who grabbed onto his arm. "Daniel's in trouble!"

"Please, Jack... it is not real!"

Jack blinked and shook his head in confusion as the SGC and the Replicators vanished. "What..." He staggered to the side and raised his hand to his head as a wave of dizziness swept over him. "What just happened?"

"You must sit down," Marzun said, gently lowering Jack back down onto his blankets. "It is not safe to open the door just now."

"Why? What... was that gunfire real?"

"Yes," Marzun said gravely. "Someone must have tried to pass through the shield."

"What, they were hallucinating?" Jack said, suddenly feeling cold. He didn't like to think that one day that could be him, walking unconsciously into forbidden territory and being gunned down before he had a chance to come to his senses.

"Perhaps," Marzun said. "That is why Derya and I always stayed together - to protect each other from just such an... accident. But sometimes... it is not an accident."

"Trying to escape?"

Marzun sighed as he settled back into his bedding. "Trying to escape the Death," he said sadly. "Not the Colony."

"Suicide," Jack said blankly.

Marzun nodded.

Jack clenched his jaw and lay back down on his bed without another word. It wasn't a pretty thought that people would rather be electrocuted and shot than live with this disease, but he knew he shouldn't really be surprised. If he had to spend months or even years in this place he might be tempted to off himself, too, even if he had the hope of rescue and a cure always in the back of his mind.

Because there _had_ to be a cure. The whole "curing the incurable" thing was what Fraiser did best, plus the Asgard and the Tok'ra had some pretty cool technology that just might do the trick. And even though the way into this place might not be the way out, there had to be another way. There was _always_ a way. He'd been in worse situations than this many times and lived to tell the tale... why not this time?

_"We are not pleased."_

Jack started at the sudden female voice and struggled to sit up. Something was holding him down, but it was too dark to see what it was.

Then he saw her eyes flash.

"Hathor."

"Once host to a Goa'uld," she said, holding the hissing, snapping symbiote over his face, "you will take the lives of your friends."

Jack craned his neck to see past the Goa'uld and saw Carter and Daniel standing on the other side of the room looking scared and sick to their stomachs. He tried to call out to them, but his voice stuck in his throat as Hathor placed the symbiote on his chest.

"When you awaken from the joining," Hathor continued, "you will kneel and pledge your loyalty... to us."

Jack screamed in pain and anger as the symbiote burrowed into his neck. He could feel it wrapping itself around his brain stem and trying to take control of his mind, but he fought against it with every ounce of strength he had left.

And then it was gone.

Jack huddled under his blankets as he panted for breath and tried to bring his racing pulse back under control.

"Are you alright, Jack?" Marzun asked calmly from the other side of the room.

"I'm great," Jack grumbled, suddenly feeling angry and somewhat jealous of Marzun and Derya's lack of sporadic hysteria. "Just peachy."

He couldn't possibly get out of this place fast enough.

To be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

It hadn't even occurred to Jack to wonder why Derya hadn't so much as stirred in his sleep during the events of the night, at least not after Marzun's explanation about "the peace." When everyone else's internal alarm clocks went off the next morning and Derya still hadn't moved, though, he knew something must be wrong.

"Derya?" Marzun said, kneeling down beside him and gently laying a hand on his friend's arm. "It is morning. De..."

The way Marzun's voice cut off mid-word told Jack all he needed to know. Derya was dead.

Jack tried to keep quiet and out of Marzun's way as the man sat beside his friend's body and silently mourned, but after twenty minutes of waiting Jack finally had to say something. "Marzun," he said as gently as he could. "I'm sorry about your friend. I really am. But you said I wasn't supposed to leave this room without you, so..."

"Of course." Marzun took a deep breath and rose unsteadily to his feet. "You must be very hungry. I will show you where we get our food."

"What about..." Jack motioned to the body in the corner.

"I will handle it later," Marzun said, keeping his gaze averted from his friend as though that were the only way he could concentrate on the task at hand. He picked up a small bucket that sat in one corner of the room and headed for the door. "Come, we will eat."

Jack wanted to ask what they did with dead bodies in this place, but he figured now wasn't the best time for that. He followed Marzun out of the room, momentarily stopping in the doorway when he saw how many sad, frightened, hopeless-looking people were milling about in the central square.

For a minute he was repulsed by them, his instincts telling him to keep his distance from such obviously disease-ridden people, but then he remembered... he was disease-ridden, too. He shuddered to think that he'd soon look just like these people if he didn't find a way out of this hellhole.

Marzun led him through the square and past the shield-protected entrance. Jack could see a patch of red on the ground where last night's victim had obviously fallen, but the body was nowhere to be seen. He didn't have much time to ponder this, though, as he hurried to keep up with Marzun, who was entering one of the long, dark tunnels, not pausing to speak to any of the people they passed along the way. Jack tried not to stare at his fellow "colonists," but he couldn't help it - at least a dozen of the people he brushed shoulders with were flailing about and talking to themselves as if acting out a scene from a play that no one else was privy to. Men, women, children... all of them dirty and smelly and afraid, yet none of them so much as batting an eye at the rantings and ravings of those around them.

Jack started at the sound of a terrified scream coming from somewhere nearby that no one else even seemed to notice. Suddenly he wasn't in the mood to eat anymore.

"This is where we come for our food and water," Marzun said at last, leading Jack into a large room that everybody seemed to be either entering or exiting all at once. When they had squeezed through the crowd, Marzun led him over to one of many small, rectangular holes in the far wall. He pulled a lever to the right of it, and a small package dropped into the hole from above.

"What's this, a vending machine?" Jack asked dryly.

Marzun gave him a confused look, but Jack just shrugged and shook his head. "This is my ration of food for the day," Marzun said, backing away from the wall and gesturing for Jack to collect his.

Jack sighed and pulled the lever. Another package fell through the opening with a thud, and Jack grudgingly picked it up. "What's in it?" he asked.

"Bread, meat, nuts, and green food... if we are lucky, there is sometimes fruit," Marzun said, as though he was describing a feast.

Jack didn't even have the energy to fake interest in Marzun's answer. He was too busy searching the contraption in the wall to see if it was a possible escape route. No such luck - even if the food shaft did lead to the world above the colony, it seemed to remain firmly closed until the lever was pulled, and then the opening was barely big enough to put your hand through.

"There are people waiting, Jack," Marzun said as he moved towards the other side of the room.

Jack grunted and turned to follow him, but stopped in surprise when he saw the person standing in line behind him.

It was Sara.

Jack felt his mouth fall open at the sight of his ex-wife in this alien prison, and he froze on the spot as he tried to wrap his mind around it. It wasn't real... he knew it wasn't real... but at the same time, all of his hallucinations up until now had been of things that scared the crap out of him or echoed his feelings of isolation and loneliness. Why would he suddenly see Sara standing next to him, right here in the present, when there were so many traumatic memories from his past that this damn disease could make him relive? For a moment this logic almost made him believe that she was really there.

"Jack?" Marzun said, looking worried as he came back to Jack's side. "Are you alright?"

The woman shrank away from Jack's stare and hurried past him to collect her rations. Jack blinked hard and rubbed his eyes as she turned away from him, and when she turned back around... Sara was gone. An old, mousy brown woman had taken her place. She was nothing like Sara at all.

"I just thought I saw someone I... used to know," Jack said, giving his head a sharp shake to clear away the confusion.

"That will happen from time to time," Marzun said, patting Jack on the shoulder. "You must just remember... if it makes no sense for the person to be here, then most likely they are not."

"Yeah," Jack said. "I'm starting to realize that."

"Come, we must get our water," Marzun said, ushering Jack over to another of the "vending machines," where he placed the bucket he had brought with him. He pulled another lever, making water pour into the bucket, and only let it go once the bucket was full. To Jack's surprise, the water was actually pretty clean. He had to give those living on the surface credit for that.

Jack kept his eyes lowered as they passed through the crowds again on their way back to their room. Already he could understand why nobody seemed to look at anybody else in this place if they could possibly avoid it. At least then there were no unwelcome surprises.

He almost felt relieved for a moment when they got back to their small room, but then he saw Derya's body in the corner and remembered what Marzun had said about "handling it later." Marzun, however, didn't even look over in that direction. Instead he set to work preparing them a small breakfast.

"I guess you must get pretty used to death in this place," Jack said as he helped sort out their meager supplies.

Marzun nodded gravely. "We are already dead when we come here," he said. "When our bodies finally cease to function, it is a mercy."

Jack swallowed hard against the urge to argue that point. He knew it would be futile anyway. Marzun had had a lot of years to come to terms with his impending fate. Jack almost admired him for staring death in the face so calmly. "What about the bodies?" he asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him. "Like the guy who was shot last night. Did someone bury him?"

"No, of course not," Marzun said, seeming surprised that Jack would even ask such a stupid question. "They are burned."

"Burned where?"

"There is a shaft," Marzun said. "We cover the body with a blanket, place it inside, and it falls into the fire."

"You've got an incinerator in this place?" Jack said, suddenly feeling excited. Where there's an incinerator there's a ventilation shaft, and where there's a ventilation shaft... there's freedom.

"Yes, it is where all of our unwanted items and leftover food scraps go, also," Marzun said.

Jack smiled for the first time since setting foot on this craphole planet. He was one step closer to going home.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Jack hadn't exactly gotten to know Derya in the few hours that they'd shared the little room, but wrapping his body up in a blanket and carrying it to the incinerator chute had a powerful effect on him. He would never have admitted it to anyone, but just the lost expression on Marzun's face as they prepared to cremate the one friend he'd had left was enough to bring Jack to the verge of tears. He'd been through this himself, and if he never had to experience that sense of loss again it would be too soon.

"Hey, Jack."

Jack did a double take and drew his hands away from the body lying before him. It was no longer Derya who was lying there... it was Daniel.

"Hey," he said, wincing at the sight of his friend covered from head to toe in bandages. Only his eyes and mouth were visible now, and the radiation sores were showing even there. "I, uh... I just wanted to..." Wanted to what? Say goodbye? That was so not going to happen. Not here. Not now. Not Daniel. Still, he had to say _something_.

Too bad nothing was coming to mind.

He chuckled ironically. "I'm really bad at this," he said.

"Yes, you are," Daniel said. His words were slurred from the medication, but Jack could hear a hint of humour in his tone. For a second it made him think that maybe Daniel wasn't quite as sick as he'd been led to believe.

But then he saw the pain in Daniel's eyes. He knew that look. Daniel was fighting as hard as he could, but he was losing the battle.

"I hear that Sam thinks the Naquadria might be an important discovery," Daniel said slowly and carefully. Jack could tell that talking coherently was a struggle for him, yet he was still making an effort to break the ice and make Jack feel more comfortable. Jack didn't know whether he wanted more to hug him or hit him for it.

"Yeah, apparently... if we can get some," he said, trying his best to sound as casual as Daniel was attempting to be. "For what it's worth, I tried to get your point across to Jonas."

"He's in a tough position."

Tough position? Jack couldn't believe his ears. He suddenly wanted to strangle something, or _someone_, and only managed to keep himself in check with a great deal of effort. "You're not gonna take the fall for this," he said, keeping his voice even and controlled as his flash of anger tapered off into determination. "I don't care what's at stake."

"Why do you care?"

This question struck Jack between the eyes. 'Why did he care?' For God's sake, didn't Daniel know him at all?

He sighed inwardly as he tried to think of a way to put it into words. He'd never been good at this stuff - he always figured it was better to _show_ people how you felt about them rather than wasting words trying to tell them. He knew Daniel was expecting him to brush him off with a snappy one-liner, but not this time. This time he had to make it count.

"Because despite the fact that you've been a terrific pain in the ass for the last five years," Jack began, fighting to keep the indignation out of his tone, "I may have... might have... grown to admire you... a little... I think." He knew it hadn't come out right, but at least it had been said.

"That's touching," Daniel said.

Jack clenched his jaw and fought the urge to give Daniel a shake. He wasn't taking any of this seriously, and Jack _needed_ him to take it seriously. If this was the last conversation they ever had...

"This will not be your last act on official record," Jack said firmly. There was no way in hell he would allow Daniel Jackson's heroic actions over the last five years to be forgotten in the shadow of a lie.

"Oma..."

Jack bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hand. Daniel was slipping away, and there was nothing he could do to bring him back.

"Did you lose a friend, too, Jack?"

Jack snapped his head back up and glared at Marzun. He'd completely forgotten where he was, and now he'd gone and poured out his heart to a corpse, with Marzun looking on the whole time.

Still, Marzun was looking at him with such understanding and empathy that Jack felt his expression soften almost instantly. "Yeah," he said gruffly. "For a while I did."

Marzun couldn't have understood what he meant by that, but he nodded anyway and didn't mention it again. The two men went back to work, and soon they were carrying Derya's body through the colony towards the incinerator.

Jack could feel his pulse racing with excitement as he caught sight of the incinerator hatch. It was just as he'd hoped - it was plenty big enough for him to climb into, and far enough away from the rest of the colonists that his escape attempt was unlikely to be seen. If he could just find a way to prevent himself from falling straight into the flames, he could climb down to the furnace and then up through the ventilation shaft to freedom. Simple.

He should have known these damn people would have thought of that.

"Dammit," he muttered under his breath as Marzun lifted the sliding door to the shaft. Just inside the opening was a shimmering force shield.

"Pardon?" Marzun said.

Jack sighed. "Nothing. Never mind. Let's do this." Without another word, he helped Marzun lift Derya's body and send it on its way to the fire below. He winced at the smell of burning fabric as the blanketed corpse passed through the force shield. There was no way in hell anyone could survive it if they tried to use the shaft as a way of escape.

"Rest in peace, Derya," he whispered, turning away from the shaft as Marzun pulled the door closed.

He was back at square one.

To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Jack spent the majority of the next three days trying to find other ways of escape, but he found it difficult to stray very far away from Marzun for more than a minute or two at a time. Marzun had taken it upon himself to act as Jack's bodyguard - or perhaps babysitter, since he seemed to feel that Jack was acting like a wandering child - so wherever Jack went, there Marzun was.

"You must not walk these corridors alone," he told Jack at least a dozen times. "It is much too dangerous, for yourself and for others."

Jack had never been one to diss the buddy system, but it sure wasn't easy trying to scout the place with Marzun constantly at his side telling him to go back to their quarters.

Not that the man's presence never came in handy. When Jack thought he saw Carter standing on the other side of the entrance tunnel's force shield and flashed back to SG-1's unfortunate experience with the Atoniek armbands, Marzun managed to pull him away from the shield before his kicking against it made the guards nervous enough to open fire. Jack owed him his life for that one. It made him realize how much worse this place could be if he didn't have someone sane to look out for him... and how much he was going to miss Marzun when he died.

The thought of Marzun's impending death lingered at the back of Jack's mind at all times. He woke up half a dozen times a night, usually from nightmares or hallucinations, and the first thing he did was look over to Marzun's corner of the room to make sure he was still breathing. He dreaded the thought of being left alone, especially if he never found a way out.

He often wondered what the rest of his team were doing. Had they been allowed to go home? Were they looking for him? Bargaining for his freedom? Had they enlisted Fraiser's help in finding a cure for whatever the hell this disease was? He wondered if they'd even been told about this so-called colony. It sure hadn't been mentioned to them before Jack had found himself inside it. Maybe they'd been told that he was dead. That seemed to be what even those in the colony believed, so why should the planet's leaders tell his team any different?

No, he realized, he shouldn't count on being rescued. He became more determined than ever to break out of this place, if it was the last thing he ever did. He'd been in enough prisons already in his life. He didn't want to die in one.

Unfortunately, scouting the colony for possible escape routes meant coming in contact with the majority of its inhabitants. Some of the folks seemed friendly enough, like Marzun only not quite so openly trusting of the newcomer, but others were what Jack assumed Marzun had been referring to when he mentioned those with "weak minds." People who seemed lost in their own heads all the time, not just during the occasional hallucination or flashback. Those people Jack tried to avoid at any cost. You could never tell when they were likely to explode in a fit of rage or panic.

He hadn't seen or heard from the man named Jumas since his first night there, but he occasionally overheard people talking about him in hushed tones. He'd halfway hoped that Jumas had been the one to catch the guards' gunfire that night, but apparently that wasn't the case. It had been a woman who had deliberately stepped into the force shield, and from what Jack could gather she had only been in the colony for a matter of days.

"The first few weeks are always the hardest," he heard an old woman wisely say as he waited behind her in the rations line. "They just do not realize that it gets easier as you near the end."

Jack watched with hardened eyes as her friends loaded the same old woman's body into the incinerator the next day. He wasn't sure whether to feel sad or relieved for her sake. All he did know was that he was going to make sure he wasn't around long enough to find himself in her position.

He drifted off to sleep that night pondering how long it might take him to dig his way out. If no other options presented themselves soon, he would have to get started if he hoped to make it out before the disease took his life. He knew it was extreme, but he was willing to do anything.

Even to believe in the impossible.

"Sir? Sir, wake up."

Jack grunted and cracked his eyes open at the sound of a familiar whisper. "Carter?" he slurred.

"It's me, sir. Are you alright?"

Jack blinked and sat up, shooting a concerned glance over at Marzun to make sure he was still alive. "I'm great, Carter," he said. "Thanks for the visit, but I'm kinda tired right now, so... if you'd like to reschedule, just talk to my..."

"O'Neill," Teal'c's deep voice rumbled from the direction of the door. "We do not have much time."

Jack looked at Carter in confusion. "Carter?" he said, starting to wonder for the first time whether she might actually be real.

"I'm here, sir," she said. "It's really me. You're not hallucinating."

Jack slowly reached out a hand to touch her arm, and grasped it like a lifeline when he found that it was solid. He laughed out loud with joy and clambered to his feet. "Am I glad to see you guys," he said, feeling more relieved than he'd ever felt in his life.

"Shhh," Carter hissed, gesturing to Marzun. "We're under strict orders to extract you and only you, sir. We can't let anyone else know that there's a way out of here or there will be a mass exodus, and hundreds of people on the surface will die."

Jack nodded and quickly collected himself. "Lead the way," he said.

Carter ushered him out of the room, where Jack found Teal'c and Daniel waiting for them out in the corridor. He wordlessly greeted them both with a thankful smile, and followed their lead through the main square and down one of the dark tunnels.

Jack had been down this tunnel many times and never found a way to escape through it, but he trusted that his team knew what they were doing. As far as he knew, it contained only private rooms, but he should have known that any escape route would be well hidden. After all, if one were plainly visible, everyone would have escaped long before he ever arrived there. He scoffed at his own stupidity. How could he ever have believed that he could make it out of here on his own?

"Right through here, sir," Carter said, pointing to the door at the end of the tunnel.

Jack felt a thrill of excitement as he reached for the handle. He was almost there. He could _feel_ freedom waiting for him on the other side of this door...

A low, canine-like growl stopped him dead in his tracks as he swung the door open. At first he didn't understand what it could be, but then his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He hadn't found freedom after all... it was just another room.

Jumas' room.

Jack glanced over his shoulder, hoping for help from his friends, but they were nowhere to be seen. Reality settled over him like a wet blanket. Hallucinations. He should have known they were only figments of his imagination. Why hadn't he _known_?

A wave of panic washed over him as he turned back to Jumas, who was staring right at him with wild, hungry eyes. He wanted to run, but he was afraid that would just make Jumas even angrier. Instead he slowly leaned forward and reached out his hand for the door handle, hoping he could pull it closed before Jumas decided to spring into action.

Too late. Before Jack had time to react, Jumas roared and leapt at him, knocking him down onto the ground.

Jack cried out and tried to wrestle the man away, but Jumas was almost inhumanly strong. He scratched at Jack's face and upper body with his long, claw-like fingernails, snapping his yellow teeth ferociously as he snarled and frothed at the mouth like a mad dog. Jack managed to clamp his hands around Jumas' throat and tried to choke him, but that just seemed to make the guy even crazier. He dug his claws into Jack's arms until Jack shouted in pain and released his hold. Then he swatted the side of Jack's head so hard that he momentarily lost consciousness.

When he came to, Jumas was dragging him further into the room by his legs. Jack flipped over onto his stomach and tried to crawl away, but again Jumas was too quick for him. He growled and snapped and grabbed Jack by the back of his shirt with both hands. He lifted him effortlessly off the ground and tossed him against the wall. Jack fell to the ground in a crumpled heap, and decided it would be in his best interest to stay that way and play dead.

"God, please, just let it be over."

Jack groaned as the snapping and snarling morphed into someone screaming Arabic obscenities at him. He may not have known much of the language, but he knew cursing when he heard it. "Yeah, bite me," he mumbled. He doubled over and covered his face with his chained hands when he received yet another kick to the stomach. "Why the hell don't you just kill me?" he muttered into the floor.

The Iraqi guard obviously heard him, because the next kick seemed twice as hard and knocked the wind right out of him. This was it... he was dying. He was surprised to find that it was almost a relief. He was just sad that he wasn't going to see Sara one last time...

"Jumas! Jumas, you must stop!"

Jack dragged his sluggish mind back to the present just in time to see Marzun charge into the room waving a heavy-looking stick. Jumas moved slowly away from Jack and took to pacing back and forth on the far side of the room, his eyes trained warily on Marzun as though he wasn't sure what to make of this second intruder.

"Are you able to stand, Jack?" Marzun asked calmly.

Jack flexed his legs and found that they still worked, so he nodded and attempted to stand. He winced when the motion caused a shooting pain in his abdomen, and almost keeled over when a wave of dizziness swept over him, but he somehow made it to the door without Jumas trying to stop him. He hurried out of the room and leaned against the wall of the corridor for a moment's rest as Marzun closed the door behind them.

"We must hurry," Marzun said, taking Jack's arm and draping it across his shoulders. He then wrapped his arm around Jack's waist, and helped to support his weight as they headed back to their own room.

As they passed through the square, Jack could have sworn he saw Daniel standing in the shadows looking worried and pale. "Yeah, no thanks to you," Jack said under his breath. He couldn't believe he'd been so gullible as to believe that SG-1 had really managed to sneak into this place to get him out.

At least he'd learned his lesson and lived to tell about it. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

To be continued...


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"Where'd you get the stick?" Jack asked once they were safely back in their quarters.

Marzun didn't answer until he'd lowered Jack down onto his blankets and made him as comfortable as possible. "Derya always kept it close at hand in case of just such an emergency," he said as he crossed the room to get some water.

"Right." Jack squinted up at Marzun's back inquisitively. "How did you know where to find me?" he asked.

Marzun sighed as he turned around and crouched down beside Jack with a clean rag and a bowl of water. "I awoke and you were gone," he said. "Once I left our quarters, I had only to follow the sound of screaming to find you. Please, hold still," he added as he touched Jack's face with the damp cloth. "I need to clean your wounds, or they are likely to become infected."

Jack tried not to flinch as Marzun carefully bathed the scratches on his face, arms, and chest, but they were jagged and deep and hurt like hell. "Got any band-aids?" Jack asked dryly.

Marzun didn't answer, but once he was finished cleaning the wounds he pulled out a small tube from under one of the blankets. "This will help with the pain, and also prevent infection," he said as he squeezed some green goo out of the tube and started dabbing it on the worst of the scratches.

"What is that stuff?" Jack asked.

"Medicine," Marzun replied. "We are not completely deprived of all comforts here."

Jack could tell from Marzun's tone that he knew Jack had been trying to escape and he didn't exactly approve. He figured it would be best for him to keep his mouth shut for a while, so once the green goo had been applied, Jack stretched out on his blankets and tried to get some sleep.

Tried, but didn't succeed. He couldn't stop thinking over what had happened and berating himself for being so stupid. He should have known by now that except for Marzun and the other "colonists," nothing and no one that he saw in this place was real. Aside from his daily routine, nothing he experienced in this place really happened. It was all just this damn disease messing with his mind.

And there was no way of escaping from this place, that much was clear. As much as he hated resigning himself to failure, it was about time he started facing facts - he was probably going to be here for the rest of his life. He needed to start preparing himself for that, and stop getting himself into situations from which he needed Marzun to rescue him. Pretty soon he was going to be on his own. That was just reality.

Reality... Jack couldn't help but laugh when he suddenly found himself playing a friendly game of chess with Teal'c back at the SGC. It was the first hallucination he'd had that seemed pleasant and restful, so he was reluctant to let it go. But let it go he must, or he knew he would end up like the "weak-minded" colonists... lost in his own little world, completely oblivious to what was really going on around him.

No, he needed to keep his mind sharp, disease or no damn disease. He quickly chased the fantasy SGC out of his mind and returned to his dark, oppressive quarters before he had a chance to think twice about it.

"How did you manage to keep yourself sane, Marz?" he asked wearily when Marzun's internal clock told him it was time to start getting ready for the day.

"What makes you think I am sane, Jack?" Marzun replied.

Jack looked up at him in surprise. Was that a hint of... humour he'd just heard in Marzun's tone?

Marzun smiled sadly and shook his head. "No one in this place is completely sane," he said matter-of-factly. "We do not need to be. No one will hate us or mock us for being who we are. For years I imagined myself with a wife and children, living a normal life on the surface... but I never allowed myself to remain in that imaginary world for very long. It made the hardest times a little easier, but reality must be faced sooner or later. Living your life always trying to escape it is much too tiresome."

"Yeah," Jack said with a sigh. He got the message loud and clear - Marzun was basically telling him to grow up and stop feeling sorry for himself.

"I must fetch our day's rations," Marzun said then as he moved towards the door. "You must stay here and rest. I will not be long."

Jack buried himself under his blankets as soon as Marzun left. His body ached from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, and he could easily have killed to get his hands on some aspirin, but he finally felt exhausted enough that he could actually sleep.

If only his mind would sleep, as well.

"Jack?"

Jack groaned and pulled the blanket down just enough to peek out with one eye. He groaned again and burrowed back under the blanket when he saw Daniel's face staring back at him. "Crap."

"What? Jack, are you awake?"

"Probably not," Jack muttered into his pillow.

"Well, could you try to be?" Daniel said impatiently. "I don't have much time before your roommate comes back."

"What difference does that make?" Jack said. "It's not like he can see you anyway."

"Jack, I'm not a hallucination. I'm real. I'm going to get you out of here, but I need you to sit up and listen to me."

"Nice try, but I'm not interested," Jack said without moving from his comfortable position. "The last time you guys tried to break me out of here, I was nearly pounded into the ground by a raving lunatic. Been there, done that, got the shredded t-shirt. Now will you please leave me alone?"

"I know about that," Daniel said, his impatience giving way to sympathy. "I saw you coming out of that room. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, no thanks to you," Jack said, poking his head out from under the blanket. "You know, I don't even know why I'm talking to you. Not only are you just a figment of my imagination, but you're a figment of my imagination that almost got me killed!"

"I realize you're confused right now, Jack..."

"Confused doesn't even begin to describe it," Jack said, wincing at the stab of pain in his side as he tried to get comfortable again.

"...and I don't know what kind of hallucinations you've had before, but I assure you that this time, it's really me."

Jack sighed and willed his brain to focus on the task of sleeping rather than hallucinating. He knew what flashback this conversation would eventually conjure up, and he wasn't exactly looking forward to it.

"I leave, and look at the mess you get yourself into."

Jack cursed under his breath as the room he was in slowly morphed into the cell in Baal's outpost. He really did not want to be here...

"It's good to see you," Daniel said.

"Yeah... you, too," Jack said cautiously. He sat down on the bench opposite Daniel's, but couldn't bring himself to relax. "It's a shame you're a delusion."

"No, I'm here. I'm really here."

"Sure you are," Jack said, not buying it for a second. He casually removed one of his shoes and tossed it across the room at Daniel.

It hit him square in the chest.

"Ow?" Daniel cocked an eyebrow at him. "What did you do that for?"

Jack stood up as quickly as his aching body would allow as he found himself back in the colony. "That... that hit you," he said, his mouth hanging open in surprise.

"Of course it hit me," Daniel said. "Like I've been trying to tell you, I'm _real_."

Jack looked Daniel up and down for the first time since he'd appeared in his room. He wasn't wearing his SG-1 uniform like he had in Jack's previous hallucinations, nor was he wearing the white sweater and beige pants from his mid-ascension visit. This time he was covered from head to toe in a dark, hooded robe, not quite the type of thing he'd worn on Abydos, but very similar to the cloaks some of the colonists wore. His mind could easily have married the two images together and spat out this hallucination as a way to assuage his fears of not being able to escape. Yeah... that's it.

"Alright, if you're really real," he said, "how did you get in this room?"

Daniel gestured towards the door, which was standing open.

Jack could have sworn Marzun had closed it when he'd left a few minutes earlier. "I could just be hallucinating that the door is open," he said thoughtfully.

"Jack, we really don't have time for this... _I am not a hallucination!_"

"Okay, so prove it," Jack said with finality. "Hit me."

Daniel looked at him like he'd just sprouted another head. "What?"

"If you're real, then prove it," Jack repeated, holding his arms out to the sides. "Hit me."

"I can't," Daniel said. "You know I can't."

"Exactly," Jack said triumphantly. "Because you're not real!"

"I mean, I can't touch anyone who has this disease, or I'll get it, too," Daniel said.

"You have to have the disease to get thrown into this place," Jack pointed out.

"I faked it, so I could come in here and _rescue you_."

Jack huffed. This conversation wasn't getting them anywhere, and he really needed to lie down. "Okay, let's say for the sake of argument that you're real," he said, easing himself back down onto his bed. "What good does that do either of us? There's no way out of here."

"There is if you know where to look."

"Trust me, Daniel... I've looked everywhere. This place is like a fortress. There are force shields everywhere."

"Sam told me how to disable them."

For a moment Jack felt a surge of hope at this revelation, but then he remembered just how crafty these hallucinations could be. He laughed and shook his finger at Daniel. "You know, you almost had me going for a second there," he said. "I think I've had enough run-ins with those damn shields for one week, though, so... how about you come back when the wounds I've already got have had a chance to heal, hmm?" He shook his head and lay back down, turning on his side away from Daniel in the hopes that he would disappear.

"I will come back," Daniel said, his voice sounding as though it was moving towards the door. "Once everyone else is asleep, I'll be waiting for you in the main square. I can't run the risk of anyone else finding out about the escape, so... you're going to have to leave the room without waking your friend."

"Right. Whatever. Goodbye, Daniel."

"Believe in me, Jack. I have to get you out of here before I get sick and start hallucinating, too, so... please. Meet me in the main square."

Jack lay there in silence for a minute or two before he turned over and chanced a look outside his covers. Daniel had vanished, and the door had closed without him hearing a sound.

He felt a little disappointed that he'd been right, but it was just as well. He turned back onto his side and drifted off to sleep.

To be continued...


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Jack slept for at least six hours straight, finally waking up to the sound of Marzun preparing his lunch. Stale bread and cold meat. Doesn't get much better than that, Jack thought ironically.

He grunted as he rolled into a sitting position, though the aches and pains of the night before had faded just a little. "Got any of that for me?" he asked when his stomach complained about being so empty.

"Of course," Marzun said. He passed Jack a chunk of bread and a scrap of dry meat, neither of which looked very appetizing.

Jack did his best to choke it down, all the while thinking about the hallucination he'd had of Daniel. _"Meet me in the main square..."_ Yeah, right. Like he was going to risk getting jumped by Jumas again in the dead of the night. He couldn't count on Marzun to come to his rescue every time he decided to do something stupid, and chasing another delusion through the colony in a vain attempt to find a way to escape was definitely stupid.

But what if he wasn't a delusion?

Jack eyed the shoe that was still lying in the middle of the room where he'd tossed it at Daniel. He could easily have just imagined it hitting him, but... wouldn't it have fallen closer to the wall if it hadn't?

He stuffed the rest of his food into his mouth and slowly rose to his feet, stretching out his aching muscles as he did so. He could feel Marzun watching him curiously as he hobbled over to his shoe and picked it up. "You must be wondering why my shoe is on the other side of the room," he said.

"I felt it would be wisest not to ask."

Jack chuckled, more out of irony than humour. "I guess stranger things have happened," he said.

As he put his shoe back on his foot, he noticed the light reflecting on something over by the wall. The object was small, maybe four inches long, metallic, and shaped suspiciously like...

A US Air Force pocket knife.

Jack dove forward and grabbed it like a lifeline. There was no doubt about it - not only was it a USAF pocket knife, it was _his_ USAF pocket knife. He hadn't been able to find it on his person when he'd arrived in this place, and he was sure he would have seen it if it had been lying on the floor the whole time. That meant someone else must have left it there.

Unless... unless it wasn't even real.

"Hey, Marz," Jack said, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. "What am I holding right now?"

Marzun approached Jack with a puzzled expression on his face. "I do not know," he said.

"But what does it _look_ like?" Jack insisted.

Marzun looked at the knife closely and gingerly took it from Jack's outstretched palms. "It is... some kind of gadget from your world?" he said uncertainly.

Jack almost danced a jig on the spot. "And... have you seen it before?" he asked. "Was it with me when I came here?"

Marzun shook his head and handed it back to Jack. "I do not know," he said. "Why are you asking me this?"

Jack tossed the knife into the air and caught it between his two palms with a joyous clap. "Because I might not have imagined it after all," he said with a grin. He didn't explain himself further, though inside he was ready to burst with his newfound hope. It had to have been Daniel that had left the knife for him to find. It must have really been him the whole time.

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation and sat back down on his bed to wait for nightfall. In just a few hours, he would know for sure.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Jack gave it a good half hour after Marzun fell asleep before he got up and silently left the room. He'd spent the entire day playing Daniel's visit over and over in his mind, sometimes convincing himself that it had all been real, other times wondering what the hell he'd been thinking believing in it at all. But the pocketknife...

He patted his pocket as he walked down the dark corridor and into the main square, feeling somewhat comforted knowing that the knife was there. He would have to be careful not to lash out at anybody with it during a hallucination, but at least he'd be able to defend himself if Jumas found him again. Plus, it gave him hope that he wasn't just stumbling blindly along after an imaginary friend. Daniel was going to be waiting for him in the square, and he was going to get out of this hellhole once and for all.

So why was the square completely deserted?

Jack stood in the middle of the square and turned a full 360, searching the shadows for any sign of Daniel. Nothing.

"Daniel?" he whispered. "You there?"

He heard a faint cry from one of the nearby rooms, but other than that, the colony was completely silent.

"Dammit." Jack sighed wearily and walked across the square to lean against the wall most hidden with darkness. He could feel every ounce of hope that had been revived with Daniel's appearance start to fade away now that he knew the truth. Daniel had never been there at all. It had just been wishful thinking, and he'd fallen for it once again.

He felt his legs growing weak, and he slowly slid down the wall until he was seated on the floor, crossing his legs in front of him and leaning his head back in despair. "This will never be over..."

Daniel's sudden presence at his side didn't faze him in the least. He looked up at him in weary acceptance of his random comings and goings, though part of him felt he had a right to be angry with him after being left to face Baal's incessant torture all alone. Still, he was here now, and Jack didn't have the energy to hold a grudge anyway. "Daniel?" he said, his mind not functioning well enough to provide him with anything else to say.

"I'm here."

Jack looked away again, suddenly feeling too exhausted to even hold his head up. "You were gone."

Daniel squatted down beside him. "I know, I'm sorry," Daniel said sympathetically. "There was something I had to do, but... I'm back now, and I promise I'll stay with you till this is over."

"It'll never be over."

"Yes, it will."

"Daniel... you have to end this."

"I will, Jack. It'll all be over soon."

Jack looked over at Daniel in confusion. That wasn't the way he remembered this conversation going...

"Are you okay?"

Jack shook his head sharply and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. When he looked up again, he was back in the colony, and he could see even in the darkness that Daniel was back in the robe he had been wearing earlier that day. "No, I'm not," he said with a sigh. "I don't know what's real and what's not anymore."

"I'm real, Jack," Daniel said gently. "I'm going to get you out of here. You just have to trust me."

"Right," Jack said. "What are you gonna do... ascend me?"

Daniel's forehead crinkled in confusion. "What?"

Jack shook his head. "Never mind. What's the plan?"

"The plan is... the incinerator."

Jack laughed. "Yeah, brilliant idea!" he said. "I'll just follow my latest hallucination through the lethal force shield and into the fiery furnace. That'll solve _all_ my problems... I'll be dead!"

"Not if we lower the force shield first, and go down while the furnace is cooling," Daniel said without missing a beat.

"And that would be..."

"Right now."

"Sounds like you've got it all figured out," Jack said. He didn't like to admit it, but he was actually pretty impressed with his subconscious this time.

"Yeah, we do," Daniel said. "Sam got her hands on the blueprints for this place, and we've spent the last two days going over them, trying to figure out the fastest and safest way of escape. We didn't have many options, so... this is it. Are you ready?"

Jack took a moment to weigh the pros and cons of the situation. The way he saw it, if Daniel was real this would be his one and only chance of getting out of here. On the other hand, if Daniel was _not_ real... well, he probably wouldn't live to regret participating in this escape attempt. If he was being completely honest with himself, that might not actually be such a bad thing. At least he would save himself years of suffering and loneliness.

He wondered how many of the supposed suicides over the years were actually people hallucinating that their friends had come to rescue them.

"Okay," he finally said, slapping his knees as he pushed himself up off the floor. "I'm ready as I'll ever be."

To be continued...


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Hallucinations can be very light on their feet, Jack noted as he and Daniel tiptoed through the corridors towards the incinerator. Daniel's padded shoes didn't make a sound. Jack wasn't sure whether that was because they were designed especially for stealth, or because he was hallucinating and his subconscious just hadn't gotten the hang of consistency yet.

Either way, both of them were completely silent as they passed room after room filled with sleeping colonists. Jack waited until they'd reached the incinerator shaft before asking the question that was on his mind.

"Where have you been hiding since you got here?" he asked as Daniel examined the door to the shaft.

"There are lots of cubbyholes in this place," Daniel answered absently. Then he turned to face Jack and got straight down to business. "Did you bring your pocketknife?" he asked.

Jack eyed him suspiciously. "So you did leave it in my room for me to find," he said.

Daniel nodded. "I figured that would convince you that I was real," he said. "I need you to stick the blade into this slot right here," he continued, pointing at a small, thin crack between the rock wall and the shaft's metal door.

Jack went to do as Daniel said, but then he stopped to think about it. "Why me?" he asked. "Why don't you do it?"

Daniel pulled out another knife from inside his robe. "Because I have to do the same on the other side," he said.

"Oh." Jack ignored the odd look Daniel was giving him and pushed the blade of his knife into the crack. "Now what?"

"Now we need to cut through the shale all around the doorframe," Daniel said, demonstrating by jiggling the knife back and forth until the crack began to widen. "Once we've done that, we can pull the frame apart, and the force shield should come with it."

"I thought you said Carter told you how to disable it, not remove it," Jack said, confused.

Daniel didn't bat an eye or break from his work on the other side of the frame. "Did I?"

Jack paused for a moment to try to rationalize what he was seeing and hearing, but he soon gave up. Daniel's plan sounded weak at best, which led him to believe that this must be a delusion, yet at the same time, debris from the wall was crumbling to the ground at Daniel's feet. That seemed real enough. But digging around a doorframe in a rock wall in order to disable a force shield? That sounded so crazy that even his subconscious mind couldn't have come up with it.

He followed Daniel's lead, digging through the crumbling shale with his knife, until he'd completed one side. His entire upper body was aching both with the effort and the beating he'd taken the night before, so he figured a break was in order. He leaned back against the wall and watched Daniel work for a minute or two.

"How are we gonna stop the other colonists from following us down there if we're taking out the force shield?" he finally had to ask.

"We're not," Daniel said. "Every morning before the colonists wake up, the guards run a diagnostic on all the force shields in the entire colony. They'll have it fixed before any of the colonists can find it."

"How? Nobody ever comes in this place."

Daniel sighed and dropped his arms to his sides in frustration. "Will you please just help me out here?" he said. "We don't have a whole lot of time, so every second we spend talking about it means there's one second less for our actual escape."

Jack grudgingly dug his knife back into the rock and started working away at his half of the bottom of the frame. "I still don't know whether this is for real or not," he grumbled.

"Well, I guess you'll soon find out, won't you?"

Jack shot him a black look. "That sounded vaguely ominous," he said.

"Just keep digging, Jack."

He didn't exactly have anything better to do, so Jack complied without argument.

As they worked, he couldn't help but notice how careful Daniel was to stay well away from him. He couldn't exactly blame him for that, but it was still a little disconcerting. He would have given almost anything for a pat on the back or even a handshake, just to know that Daniel was made of solid matter. After two visits the year before from ascended Daniel, though, he figured he should be getting used to this kind of thing.

The two of them each scraped away at their respective halves of the frame for the next few minutes, until their incisions finally met in the middle. Jack wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and looked to Daniel for further instructions. "Well? What now?" he asked.

"Now, I need you to pull the frame away," Daniel said as he stepped back and reached his hand into his robe to put his knife away.

Jack almost scoffed at this, but shrugged it off instead. "Of course you do," he said. His tone finished his thought without him having to say another word - Daniel was getting him to do it because Daniel couldn't do it himself. Jack added another point to the score for "just a delusion."

Still, there was no harm in trying. At least, he hoped there was no harm in trying. He dug his knife into the crack again until the tip of the blade reached the back of the frame, and then started wrestling with it, digging his fingers as deeply into the shale as they would go in an attempt to grab hold of the frame's edge.

"There's no way this is going to work," he said after pulling and tugging until his fingers were raw. The frame had moved, but not enough to dislodge it from the wall. Jack gave up in disgust and turned to look over at Daniel. "Are you going to help me or what?" he snapped.

Daniel was leaning back against the wall a few feet behind Jack, holding a rope that had somehow appeared out of thin air. He seemed to be trying to make a noose out of it. "Keep trying," he said without even looking up. "Sam promised me this would work."

Jack grunted in frustration and turned back to the frame. He took his knife and jammed it back into the groove, running it along the outline of the frame from top to bottom, side to side, looking for a spot that might have been missed.

Halfway along the bottom of the frame, it came to a stop.

"What the..." Jack looked closer at the spot, and saw that the incision in the rock was only half as deep on Daniel's side as it was on his. "Daniel!"

"Yeah?"

"You were talking to _me_ about wasting time?" Jack said, spinning around to glare at him angrily. "You didn't even do your half of the job right!"

Daniel gave him a blank look and walked over to the incinerator to take a look for himself. He scratched his head in confusion. "I could have sworn I..."

"Great," Jack said, throwing his arms up in defeat. "So you _are_ a delusion. Just perfect. Screw this. I'm going back to bed." He threw his knife on the ground and stomped off in the direction of his quarters.

"Jack, just give me two more minutes, and I promise, I will get you out of here."

Despite his better judgment, Jack slowed to a stop. He knew he was going to hate himself for it later, but the idea that Daniel was real and had just made a mistake burned in the back of his mind and refused to go away. After all, when had he had a delusion that had lasted this long and been this coherent?

Then again, maybe that was how the disease progressed.

He ran his hands through his hair irritably and turned back around. "Two minutes," he said. "Then I'm going back to bed whether you're a delusion or not."

"Fair enough," Daniel said.

Jack carefully bent over to pick up his knife, and the work began again. Both men worked feverishly away at the bottom of the frame, and just as Daniel had promised, they were done in less than two minutes.

"Okay, let's try this together," Daniel said, taking hold of the left side of the frame as Jack took hold of the right. "Ready? One... two... three."

They each pulled as hard as they could, and the frame came away from the wall in a shower of dust and debris.

Jack almost laughed triumphantly until he realized half the people in the colony would hear it. Instead he gave a little jump for joy and pumped his arms in the air.

Daniel grinned, looking almost as relieved as Jack felt. "Okay," he said, holding up the rope. "Time to get the hell out of here."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Once the rope had been secured to the wall by a metal clamp that Daniel had also magically produced from inside his robe, Jack turned to him with an inquisitive look. "So... who goes first?" he asked.

Daniel shrugged. "I'll let you make that call," he said.

"Okay... you go first." He wasn't sure why he figured that would make him feel better about the whole thing, he just knew that this was one mission where he didn't want to take point.

"Okay," Daniel said. He quickly fastened the rope around his waist and hoisted himself up into the gaping hole in the wall. "Here goes nothing," he said.

Then he dropped out of view.

Jack stepped closer to the hole and peered down into the darkness. The shaft didn't go straight down, he noticed - there was just enough of an incline for Daniel to almost crawl down the chute, only using the rope as a safety line in case he started to slip. Jack found that encouraging. At least he wouldn't fall to his death right away, even if the rope turned out to be a figment of his imagination.

After a couple minutes, the rope moved as if someone was tugging on it. "I'm down!" he heard Daniel's faraway voice shout. "Your turn."

Jack took a deep breath and climbed up into the hole, half expecting to feel a jolt from the force shield they had so easily removed. When nothing happened, he braced himself and took the plunge.

It wasn't a pleasant descent, by any stretch of the imagination. How scraps of food could go through an electrified force shield and still stick to the sides of the shaft and turn rotten was beyond him, but somehow it had happened. A lot. After moving just five feet down the shaft, he was covered in crud from head to toe.

"Ugh," he grumbled as the smell of it turned his stomach. "Please tell me there isn't a pile of this crap at the bottom."

Thankfully, there wasn't. What he did find at the bottom was a huge vat full of ashes and still glowing embers.

"Daniel?" Jack called. He could easily jump down onto the side of the vat, as the rim was almost wide enough for two people to walk side by side all the way around it, but he was hesitant to make a move until Daniel had confirmed that it was safe.

"Just jump down, Jack," he heard Daniel say, though he couldn't see him from his position half in and half out of the shaft.

"Easy for you to say," Jack muttered. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He was just about to jump when he heard an angry howl coming from above him. The rope was pulled out of his grasp, causing him to lose his balance and fall directly into the vat.

Even before he hit the ashes, his surroundings had changed and the sounds and smells of Netu invaded his senses. Wailing, screaming, blood, sweat, fire, fear... death.

"No," Jack groaned, pounding his head with his fists as he found himself lying in The Pit. "I'm not here. Dammit, wake up!"

He heard another scream, but this time he recognized it as Jumas' predatory cry. He was there - Jack could feel his presence with him in the vat - but he couldn't see him.

"Daniel!" he cried.

Suddenly, he felt someone grab him by his shirt, and a fist connected with his face so hard that it jolted him back to reality. Jumas was on top of him, getting ready to claw him to pieces just for the pleasure of it.

Jack thought fast and reached into his pocket for his knife. Before Jumas had a chance to strike another blow, Jack flipped the knife open and plunged it into Jumas' gut. He gave his wrist a sharp twist to finish the job, and quickly rolled out from under him as Jumas fell face down in the ash.

It didn't occur to Jack until he saw the body lying motionless in front of him that it might have all been a hallucination. He felt his face drain of all colour as his stomach plunged down into his shoes.

What if he'd just killed Daniel?

"Daniel? You there?"

His fear intensified when there was no answer.

"Daniel? Dammit, answer me!"

"I'm right here, Jack."

Jack spun around to find Daniel standing directly behind him. He clambered to his feet and glared at him angrily. "Why the hell didn't you answer me?" he said. "I thought I'd killed you!"

"Hard to do that when I'm just a figment of your imagination," Daniel said.

Jack felt a flash of rage, though he swallowed it down as best he could. "You think this is a time for sarcasm?" he snapped. "You finding this situation amusing, Daniel? Some rescuer you are."

"No, I don't find any of this amusing," Daniel said evenly. "And you're welcome."

"For what?"

Daniel pointed to the body lying at their feet.

Jack looked down and blinked in surprise. There was a knife sticking out of Jumas' back. "Okay..." Jack said slowly, massaging his forehead with his fingers. "Now I know I must be hallucinating. How the hell did you do that?"

"Lucky shot," Daniel said irritably. He turned around and walked across the ashes and debris to the side of the vat, where the rope was hanging down from somewhere above. "Coming?" he called over his shoulder.

Jack glanced down at Jumas one more time. He still couldn't believe it. Then again, maybe he could. He wasn't sure what he believed anymore.

He shook his head wearily and followed Daniel to the rope. It wasn't a long way up to the rim of the vat, but since he still wasn't able to touch Daniel without making him sick, the rope sure came in handy. Once he'd hauled himself out, Daniel led him around the wide rim to the ventilation shaft on the opposite side.

"After you," Daniel said, offering him a flashlight that he'd pulled out of his robe.

Jack took the flashlight, smiled and nodded. The shaft was barely four feet up from the rim of the vat, and seemed to slope upwards gradually enough that crawling through it would be easy. He hoisted himself up and began his long trip to the surface.

He could almost taste freedom already.

To be continued...


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

The ventilation shaft was even filthier than the first one, but at least this time it was with soot rather than rotten leftovers. Soot Jack could handle. As long as he didn't start hallucinating that he was a character in Mary Poppins, he would be okay.

Daniel crawled along about two feet behind him, moving so silently that Jack kept looking back over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure he was still there. His paranoia still hadn't eased up where Daniel was concerned, despite all the potential "proof" that he was really there. There was just something about the whole situation that didn't feel right, though he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

"Gotta stop for a minute," he said after crawling for what seemed like forever. They had reached a part of the shaft that was level enough for them to sit down and rest without slipping back down into the incinerator, and he intended to take advantage of it while he could. He coughed as the soot he'd breathed in caught in his throat. "Got any water on you?" he asked.

Daniel sat down beside him and reached into his robe. "Here you go," he said, pulling out a canteen and handing it to Jack.

Jack lifted an eyebrow as he took it from Daniel, being careful not to touch his hand. "Got any cheeseburgers in there?" he asked, only half joking.

"What?"

Jack shook his head and opened the canteen. "Never mind," he said, and took a swig.

Daniel shrugged and took out another canteen. Jack watched him curiously as he drank from it, examining Daniel's robe carefully for any bulges that might indicate what else he had tucked away in there. He didn't see anything suspicious at all.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Daniel asked a moment later.

"I'm curious," Jack said, still eying the robe. "How is it that whenever we need something, you just happen to have it hidden somewhere in your magical robe?"

"Because I planned ahead, Jack," Daniel said with the air of someone who is trying to teach a toddler a well-known fact. "And you wouldn't believe the amount of pockets this thing has," he added, looking down at it in wonder.

Jack rolled his eyes. He felt like asking if it had been made out of a carpet like Mary Poppins' bag, but he really didn't want to encourage that thought to remain in his mind.

"I'm sorry to say this, but we really need to keep moving," Daniel said once he'd tucked the canteens away again. "It'll be daylight soon."

"No, actually daylight is... three hours and fifty two minutes away," Jack said almost robotically.

Daniel furrowed his brow and squinted at him. "How did you know that?"

Jack grimaced and shook his head. "Don't ask." He sighed as he maneuvered back into a crawling position. "Onward and upward," he said, moving forward even though he suddenly felt like there were lead weights attached to his hands and feet.

"So, these hallucinations you've been having," Daniel said as they crawled along. "Have any of them lasted this long before?"

"Ah, so you admit you're a hallucination," Jack said, glancing back for a second to smirk at him.

"Nooo, I'm asking if they've ever lasted this long."

"Not that I recall, no," Jack said with a longsuffering sigh.

"So... does that mean you're starting to believe me?"

Jack hesitated for a moment before answering. "Maybe."

"Maybe's good," Daniel said. "I guess it's brought you this far."

"No, what's brought me this far is curiosity, plain and simple," Jack said. "Not to mention desperation."

Daniel grunted, but Jack couldn't tell whether it was from crawling uphill or what he'd said.

"Though if I am just imagining this," Jack continued, "I've gotta have a word with my subconscious when this is all over. There had to be an easier way to get out of here than crawling through this damn shaft for miles."

"There isn't always a way out, Jack."

Jack stopped in surprise and turned back to look at Daniel. Somehow it barely even registered to his mind that they weren't in the shaft anymore - they were standing in his cell in Baal's fortress.

"How many more times do you think you can go into that sarcophagus before it starts changing you?" Daniel asked. "How many times has it been already? It can regenerate your body, make you strong enough to go through that all over again, but all the time it's destroying who you are. And once that happens... you won't be able to ascend no matter how much you want to."

"Hey," Jack said as patiently as he could, "I appreciate what you're trying to do..."

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe you could do it," Daniel said.

"This is me we're talking about!"

"Yes, it is. Now, please... just try to open your mind."

"Oh, stop it, will you?" Jack said irritably. He sat down, hoping Daniel would take the hint and shut up, but he always was a persistent son of a bitch.

"Come on, Jack," Daniel said, more insistently than ever. "You think the Asgard named a ship after you because they thought it was a cool name? Now's not the time to play dumb. You're a lot smarter than that. They saw our potential in you... because of who you are and what you've done. Humanity's potential. That's the same thing Oma saw in me."

"I am not you," Jack said firmly.

"Yeah, when has that ever stopped you from doing anything?"

Jack sighed in frustration. There was just no getting through to this guy. "Okay," he said, "put yourself in my shoes, and me in yours."

"You'd be here for me."

"Damn straight!" Jack jumped to his feet. "I'd have busted you out, blown this rat hole to hell, and made sure that son of a bitch suffered!"

"The Others would have stopped you."

"They'd have a hell of a fight on their hands."

"You wouldn't do that."

"Baal would be dead..."

"Jack..."

"And don't think I'd stop there."

"You're a better man than that."

"That's where you're wrong!"

Jack paused to catch his breath, the weight of the words he'd just said finally settling on his shoulders. When he looked around again, the cell was gone, and he was back in the shaft.

Daniel was crouched beside him, a safety zone of just over a foot between them, looking at Jack with an anxious and pained expression.

Jack shuddered and sucked in a deep breath of sooty air. Of all the flashbacks he could have had at that moment, it had to be the one memory he'd never wanted Daniel to know about.

Daniel had only been back in human form for a few months, and he still had patches of his memory missing. He had only retained a handful of memories from when he was ascended, and as far as Jack knew, the visits he'd paid him in Baal's prison weren't among them. He hoped that nothing he'd said had tipped Daniel off as to what had happened there, but from the dumbstruck look on Daniel's face... he knew.

"Jack?" Daniel said, studying him warily. "Are you with me?"

He was tempted to say he'd been with him all along, but instead he opted for a simple, "Yeah."

"Why... did that conversation sound familiar?"

Jack thumped his head back against the side of the shaft and squeezed his eyes closed. "Ah crap," he whispered. "Here we go."

"It was me, wasn't it?" Daniel said. "I was there... when you were captured."

"Yeah," Jack said with a sharp nod. "You seem to enjoy appearing out of nowhere when I'm in captivity. You gave me the same 'I'm not a delusion' speech then, too."

"Wow," Daniel said under his breath. "I... I didn't remember."

Jack felt himself relax a little when he saw the faraway look on Daniel's face. He looked almost as lost as Jack had been feeling since he'd arrived in this place. He found that encouraging somehow. At least this was the Daniel he knew. "I figured," he said. "That's why I never said anything."

"Was I..." Daniel cut himself off mid-sentence and looked down at his hands.

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

"What?" Jack repeated.

Daniel sighed. "Was I... helpful?" he asked, looking back at Jack with a nervous laugh.

Jack tilted his head from side to side. "Depends on what you mean by 'helpful,'" he said.

"Oh." Daniel seemed to sag a little bit as he spoke, as though Jack's words had disappointed him. "I guess I probably offered to ascend you, right?"

"That you did," Jack said.

Daniel chuckled. "And I take it that didn't go down very well," he said.

"No, that it didn't."

Daniel tried to laugh again, but it faded as he looked around at their current situation. "I'm starting to wish I could still do that now just to get us out of here," he said.

Jack almost reached over to pat Daniel's shoulder before he checked himself and tucked his hands under his legs instead. "Don't sweat it," he said. "I think I'd rather keep on hallucinating than be glowy for all eternity anyhow."

Daniel snorted. "I'm sure you would," he said. He suddenly turned thoughtful then, and looked over at Jack with a curious expression. "Though a candle burns in my house, there's nobody home," he said almost absently. "Did... did you say that?"

Jack was confused for a moment, until he remembered - back in Baal's fortress, Daniel had come out with some unintelligible Oma-riddle, so Jack had made one up in return. "So you _do_ remember," he said, not sure whether to be pleased or filled with dread.

"Apparently," Daniel said. His forehead wrinkled in concentration for a moment, as though he were trying to fish more memories out of the foggy places in his mind, but finally he shrugged his shoulders and moved as if to resume crawling. "Ready to get moving again?" he asked.

Jack sighed and nodded. Truth be told, he was exhausted as hell, but the sooner they got out of this shaft the better.

If only he could hold back the damn flashbacks for the rest of their journey, everything would be a-ok.

To be continued...


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"At the end of the tunnel, there's a light." Jack was sure it was a quote from something, though he couldn't remember what. It certainly seemed to fit their situation as they neared the end of the shaft over an hour later.

"Daylight?" Daniel asked from somewhere behind him.

"Too dim," Jack said. "Probably moonlight."

"Okay, there should just be a screen over the hole," Daniel said, trying to look past Jack to see for himself. "They're more worried about keeping people in than keeping them out, so... it shouldn't be too hard to kick it off."

"You're sure there's no force shield?" Jack asked.

"You're closer. You tell me."

Jack made a face that Daniel couldn't see and tentatively touched the wire mesh screen. No crackle, no burned flesh... they were home free. "Watch out," he said. He made sure Daniel was a few feet behind him before he lay flat on his back on the floor of the shaft and started kicking at the screen. One... two... three... and the screen broke free.

Jack turned to Daniel with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. "We're out," he said, not even caring that he was stating the obvious.

Daniel grinned back, and followed close behind as Jack crawled out of the shaft and into the open. Never before had fresh, night air smelled so sweet. Jack took a moment to breathe it in and stretch his cramped muscles before he turned around to look at what he was leaving behind.

There was nothing but rock as far as his eyes could see.

"It's a mountain," he said in surprise.

"Yeah," Daniel said as he squatted down to put the grate back in place over the hole in the rock wall. "They locked you guys in pretty tight. They put you under as much rock as they could find."

Jack shook his head in amazement as he backed away a few paces and looked up. He didn't know how high the thing was, but he had a feeling that what he could see from there didn't even come close to the top.

"Daniel," he said as a sudden thought occurred to him. "I don't remember seeing a mountain from this planet's Stargate. Nor from the town, for that matter."

Daniel didn't look up from his work, which Jack took to mean that he was uncomfortable with answering the question.

"Daniel...?"

"Yeah," Daniel said nervously as he rose to his feet. "It's, uh... it's a fair walk to the gate from here."

"Fair walk? What the hell does that mean?"

"It means pretty damn far, Jack."

"Great. Now you tell me."

"We can probably make it by night fall if we get started right away," Daniel said, already walking towards what looked like a small forest straight ahead.

"I'm guessing you mean we'll get there by night fall if we walk really fast the entire way," Jack said as he tried to keep up with his rapid pace.

"The guards are going to find out any minute now that something's wrong down there," Daniel said. "We've got to get as far away from this place as possible before that happens."

Jack didn't need to be told twice. He didn't say another word, concentrating his energies on mindlessly following Daniel as he confidently strode through the woods with the air of a man who knows exactly where he's going. Minutes later they came to a meadow full of tall grass, which led them into another wood that seemed even thicker and darker than the first one, despite the fact that dawn had by that time broken.

"Don't suppose we could stop for a rest at some point," Jack said when he'd tripped over a tree root for the third time and almost fallen flat on his face. "Cause if we don't... pretty soon you're gonna have to carry me, and I wouldn't want you to catch my cooties in the process."

Daniel stopped and turned around, looking intensely guilty and sympathetic. "I'm sorry, Jack," he said. "You must be exhausted." He took out the two canteens from his robe and passed Jack the one that had been designated his. "I guess we can afford five minutes."

Jack gratefully accepted the water and plopped down on a nearby, moss-covered log. After quenching his thirst, he shot a curious look over at Daniel. "How come you're hanging onto this, anyway?" he asked. "Think I'm too whacked out to carry my own canteen?"

The guilty look returned to Daniel's face, and he did his best goldfish impersonation as he tried to think of how to reply. "I just... didn't want to take any chances with it," he said. "That's all we've got, so if you drink it all or spill it..."

"Right," Jack said, cutting Daniel off before he could say any more. "I get it." He felt like throwing something, but he supposed that would more or less prove Daniel's point - he had become too crazy to be entrusted with even the simplest of tasks.

"You can carry it if you want," Daniel said, but Jack could tell by the hesitation in his voice that he felt it would be a bad idea.

Jack shook his head and tossed the canteen back to Daniel. "I gotta take a leak," he said, rising to his feet and heading for a clump of bushes a few feet away.

"Drink it all or spill it," he muttered under his breath once he was far enough away that Daniel wouldn't overhear. "Either that, or the damn thing doesn't even exist." Somehow that thought was even less encouraging than the first.

Jack had barely had time to relieve himself when he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see what it was, but nothing was there. He had just chalked it up to his imagination when he heard Daniel call urgently, "Jack!"

He quickly buttoned up again and dashed over to where he'd last seen him, but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what was going on.

Daniel was being held at gunpoint by two men covered from head to toe in protective gear.

"Stop!" one of them shouted. "Come no closer, or we will kill you both!"

Jack held his hands up in surrender, though he had no intention of allowing them to take him back. He glanced at Daniel, who was also standing still with his hands raised, and they exchanged a communicative look. He could tell that Daniel was thinking exactly what he was thinking - they would rather go down fighting than be locked away forever in an even stronger prison than before, this time with no hope of escape.

At a slight nod from Jack, Daniel spun around and grabbed the gun away from one of the men, while Jack took a flying leap at the second man and knocked him to the ground. "Think you can catch us that easy?" he snarled as he drove his fist into the man's face.

Only the face didn't belong to a man wearing protective gear and carrying a gun. That man had disappeared, leaving in his place a man wearing a robe and holding a canteen.

"Oh God," Jack breathed when he saw Daniel's frightened, blood-smeared face looking up at him. He quickly scrambled to his feet and backed away half a dozen paces, but he knew it was too late - he had infected Daniel.

"I'm... I'm sorry..." he stammered, guilt and fear almost paralyzing him. What if they weren't able to find a cure after all? What if he had just effectively killed Daniel?

Daniel lay frozen on the ground for a long moment before rolling onto his side and pushing himself up into a sitting position. He carefully wiped the blood from his nose, straightened his robe, and brushed the forest debris out of his hair without saying a word. Jack was just starting to wonder whether he was in shock of some kind when Daniel rose to his feet and started walking again in the direction they had been heading before their break. "We should keep going," Daniel said in a low voice.

Jack wasn't sure whether to silently comply or to yell at Daniel for being so damn calm and accepting. "Daniel," he said as he jogged to catch up with him, "You do realize you've just been infected, right?"

"Yes, I do," Daniel said without breaking his stride.

"So you realize you're probably gonna start hallucinating pretty soon, right?" Jack continued. "And then become disoriented and probably pass out?"

"That's exactly why we have to keep going."

Jack sighed. Daniel had a point, and Jack knew it. He just wished they had at least a glimmer of hope that they were going to make it out of this alive. "If worse comes to worse," he said, taking Daniel's arm to stop him from walking for a moment, "I'll carry you myself."

Daniel forced a smile and patted Jack's shoulder. "I know you will," he said.

Jack felt his resolve strengthen as they started walking again. They were going to make it off this rock and back to the SGC if it was the last thing he ever did. Maybe rescuing himself hadn't been enough of an incentive to keep him moving at top speed, but rescuing Daniel certainly was. He'd been feeling exhausted and sore before, but now he was getting his second wind.

He had to get Daniel home.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"Daniel," Jack said irritably after they'd been hiking through the woods for well over two hours, "if we're going to spend the entire trip back to the gate in this damn forest, could you please just tell me now?"

Daniel cocked his head from side to side before answering. "Not... the entire trip," he said.

"Great, that's helpful," Jack grumbled. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Couldn't the Tok'ra have zipped in and picked us up once we were clear of the colony?" he asked. "Or the Asgard... even better."

"We tried, Jack, believe me," Daniel said. "We can make this, just... keep walking."

Jack sighed. "Don't really have much of a choice there," he said, trying to ignore the nagging pain in his side and the incessant ache in his knees and back.

"Do you want to... play some kind of word game?" Daniel suggested.

Jack glared at him.

"What?" Daniel said defensively. "It might take our minds off our situation for a little while."

"Somehow I doubt that, but thanks for trying."

Barely a minute passed in uncomfortable silence before Jack rolled his eyes and gave in. "What kind of word game?" he reluctantly asked.

Daniel seemed oddly triumphant at Jack's change of heart. "How about... word association?" he said.

"Sure," Jack said with a complete lack of enthusiasm. "Whatever you say."

"Okay... first word that comes to mind when I say... forest."

"Hell."

"Jack..."

"You said 'the first word that comes to mind.' That was it."

Daniel gave a longsuffering sigh. "Okay... hot."

Jack grinned. "Mary Steenbergen."

"What is it with you and Mary Steenbergen?" Daniel asked, shooting Jack an odd look.

Jack shrugged. "She's hot. I thought we'd already established that."

"Yeah, I guess we did," Daniel said wryly. "Though I'm not sure somebody's name should actually count as a word."

"Hey, you said..."

"Yeah, I know what I said," Daniel interrupted. He took a deep breath as he climbed over a fallen tree that was lying across their path. "Next word... actress."

Jack was tempted to name another one, but he figured that would just be sending the game into an endless loop that neither of them were going to enjoy. He took a second to think as he climbed over the log, and then said, "Movie."

"Movie... The Wizard of Oz."

Jack froze and stared at the back of Daniel's head as he kept walking.

Daniel only continued on for two or three more paces before he realized Jack was no longer at his side. He turned around and looked back at him with concern. "You okay?"

Truth be told, Jack was wondering that himself. "Why did you say that?" he asked, watching Daniel's every movement with suspicion.

"Say what?" Daniel asked, confused.

"The Wizard of Oz," Jack said impatiently. "Why did you name that specific movie?"

Daniel shook his head and furrowed his forehead in complete bewilderment. "I don't know," he said. "I guess I'm just so used to your frequent references that it sprang to mind first. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because that's what _I_ was thinking," Jack said.

Daniel stared at Jack in dumb surprise for a moment, but then he laughed and threw out his arms in frustration. "Please don't tell me we're back to this," he said. "I am not a figment of your imagination, Jack."

"Oh no?" Jack said, feeling empowered now that everything seemed to be making sense. "Then why aren't you sick?"

Daniel blinked. "What?"

"You were exposed hours ago," Jack said. "You should have started showing symptoms by now."

Daniel looked down for a moment, and then his gaze darted nervously around at the surrounding trees as though he was fishing for a response. "I... I guess the inoculation worked," he finally said.

Jack scoffed and kicked a nearby tree root. "Inoculation?" he repeated cynically. "Funny that you never mentioned this before. What inoculation, pray tell?"

"Janet said there was only a twenty-five percent chance that it would be effective," Daniel said through gritted teeth. "I didn't want to rely on that to keep me safe."

Jack laughed, suddenly hoping Daniel _was_ real just so he could inflict some kind of pain on him. "So even when I thought I'd effectively killed you, that still wasn't a good time to tell me there was a slim chance that I hadn't?" he said.

"Well, look at it this way, Jack... if I was really just a delusion, a... a manifestation of your subconscious mind, I _would_ have told you then. Unless subconsciously you love torturing yourself with needless guilt, but if that's the case it's not me you should be angry with."

Jack tried to process what Daniel was saying, but his mind had suddenly become way too foggy to follow along. It was like a thick, soupy mist was settling over his thoughts, making them seem distant and muffled and difficult to grasp onto.

"Jack... are you okay?"

He tried to answer Daniel's concerned question, but his head had started to swim, making it necessary for him to ease himself down onto the ground before he took an ungraceful nosedive.

"Jack? Talk to me."

He saw Daniel's face floating in front of him, looking pale and worried... but then it disappeared. As hard as Jack tried to look around him, Daniel was nowhere to be seen.

All alone in the middle of the dark forest, Jack finally gave in to exhaustion and lost consciousness.

To be continued...


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

A fly landing on his nose finally brought Jack back around. After a moment of disorientation, his freakishly accurate internal clock told him he had been out for twenty-two minutes exactly.

He groaned and raised his hands to his head when it started to register that he had acquired a massive, pounding headache in those twenty-two minutes. He slowly lifted himself up to a sitting position, and looked around.

Still the same damn forest. He'd almost hoped he'd dreamt the whole thing.

"Hey, Jack."

Jack started in surprise when he heard Daniel's voice coming from somewhere behind him. Before he had the chance to turn around, Daniel had appeared at his side and was crouching down to get a better look at his face. "You're still here?" Jack asked, the words coming out sounding grouchier than he'd intended.

"Where else would I be?" Daniel said, passing Jack his canteen. "How are you feeling?"

"Terrible, but thanks for asking." Jack took a swig of water, though he was more or less convinced that it was just imaginary. It was probably because of dehydration that he'd collapsed in the first place. Still, if this was his mind's way of keeping him going through all of this, he wasn't going to knock it.

"You were out for at least half an hour," Daniel said. "I was getting worried."

"Actually, it was twenty-two minutes," Jack said, waving away Daniel's proffered arm and rising shakily to his feet on his own.

Daniel's eyes widened in surprise. "That's amazing," he said. "I wonder why a keen sense of time is one of the symptoms of this thing. Maybe it affects a certain area of your brain that..."

"Yeah, while I'm sure the science behind it is absolutely fascinating," Jack said, "I really think we should get back to the whole escape thing before I pass out again."

Daniel's mouth snapped shut and he quickly hopped closer to take Jack's arm as he swayed dizzily after attempting to take a step forward.

"I'm fine," Jack said, steeling himself with sheer determination. "I don't need you to usher me along like a little old lady."

"Okay." Daniel stepped back and held his hands in the air.

"Thank you," Jack muttered. "Alright..." He sighed and squared his shoulders. "One foot in front of the other."

Daniel silently walked alongside him for a few paces, until Jack stumbled trying to step over a tree root. He moved as if to help him again, but Jack swatted his arm away.

"I can handle this, Daniel," he said.

"Jack, why don't you just let me..."

"No."

"Maybe I could just..."

"Can it, Daniel."

Daniel made a sound of frustration, but closed his mouth and wisely left Jack alone.

This just made Jack even more positive that he wasn't dealing with the real Daniel.

He managed to keep himself upright for the next few minutes as they walked along, but it took all of his willpower to keep his legs from becoming two big, quivering globs of jelly. He could only remember a handful of times in his life that he had felt so exhausted, all of which had ended with incredibly narrow escapes from death. He was determined to make it to the gate before his strength gave out entirely, knowing that once he made it back to Earth, his job would be done and trained professionals would instantly take over and nurse him back to health.

Providing, of course, that he was actually heading in the right direction.

"Jack," Daniel suddenly said, grabbing Jack's arm to stop him from walking. "Do you hear that?"

Jack tilted his head to listen, though he wasn't sure exactly what he was supposed to be hearing. Still, if his delusion was hearing something...

And then it registered.

"That sounds like... water," he said, the sound giving him a rush of excitement and renewed energy as he started walking towards it.

The sound grew louder and louder as the two of them jogged between the trees, until finally they entered a clearing and saw the most beautiful babbling brook that Jack had ever seen.

Not that there was anything special about this particular brook - it was just like any other brook they'd come across on a multitude of planets throughout the galaxy, but Jack's extreme thirst and exhaustion made it seem like he'd just stumbled across a little piece of paradise. He dropped down on his knees by the water's edge and started scooping handfuls of the cold, clean liquid up to his face until he had drunk his fill.

It was only then that he looked over at Daniel, who was kneeling a few feet away from him, calmly dipping the canteens into the water and slipping them back inside his robe.

"Not thirsty, Daniel?" Jack asked after wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Daniel shrugged and smiled. "Not as thirsty as you were, obviously."

"Yeah, I'll bet," Jack said. He sat back on the grass and surveyed their peaceful surroundings with curiosity. "So... did you know this place was here?"

"I knew there was a creek of some kind between the colony and the gate, yes," Daniel answered, seemingly unfazed by the question. "I was hoping we'd find it along the way."

Jack chuckled, but didn't say anything. There really was nothing to be said - first the secret inoculation and now the secret source of desperately needed water? There was no way Daniel would have kept those facts from him if he had really come to rescue him.

But no matter. He'd had his first real drink of water since he'd started on this journey, and he could already feel his second wind coming over him. Or was it his third wind? Whatever it was, he hoped it could take him as far as the Stargate.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

They only rested for a couple minutes at the creek before starting on their way again. Jack didn't want to waste his newfound energy just sitting around. He intended to walk until he dropped... or until they found the gate. Whichever came first.

He kept his eye on Daniel as they hiked, fully expecting him to disappear or morph into someone or something else at any moment, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. Daniel kept his eyes straight ahead and his mouth shut, the expression on his face looking more and more strained and anxious as time dragged on.

Finally, Jack couldn't take the silence anymore.

"What's on your mind, Daniel?" he asked, more out of boredom than interest in the answer.

Daniel glanced over at Jack for a moment, but then turned his eyes back to the path ahead. "I'm just a delusion, remember?" he said. "I don't even _have_ a mind, so how could there be anything on it?"

Jack had to concede the point. "True enough," he said. "But I'm bored, so... make something up."

Daniel clenched his jaw and shook his head. "I'm too tired to play this game, Jack," he said with uncharacteristic resignation. "Let's just walk, okay?"

Jack gave Daniel a curious sideways glance. "What's the matter with you?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"That wasn't a 'nothing' kind of tone..."

"You know, maybe I'm just tired, Jack," Daniel finally snapped. "Tired of... of busting my ass trying to get you out of that place and off this planet, and getting nothing in return but doubt and suspicion."

Jack stared at him in surprise. He hadn't anticipated an outburst like this at all. "Well, what do you expect, Daniel?" he said. "Everything I see and hear could just be my imagination playing tricks on me. That tends to make a guy a little suspicious, wouldn't you say?"

It seemed as though Daniel wanted to respond, but he restrained himself with a visible effort and kept silent.

Jack shook his head and took the hint. Daniel, whether he was a delusion or not, was pouting. He knew it would make life a hell of a lot easier if he just left him to it.

Exhaustion soon began to kick in again as they emerged from the forest and found that they now had rolling hills to climb. As they started up the first hill, Jack flashed back to his trek across the planet with the sick plants and mute aliens. Fortunately, that didn't interfere with what he was doing - he already had the pounding headache and silent companion, after all. When he came back to the present, Daniel was still walking along beside him, lost in his own little world. Jack was relieved at that. Daniel obviously hadn't noticed that anything had happened.

Though part of him was starting to wonder whether his mind was getting too tired to animate Daniel-the-delusion beyond walking beside him now. He hadn't said a word or made a sound in almost two hours. That just wasn't like him.

"Are we there yet?" Jack asked at the foot of the second hill.

"Shouldn't be long now," Daniel said, so quietly that Jack had to strain to hear him.

Jack looked at Daniel more closely then. He hadn't noticed before how pale he'd gotten, and how sunken his eyes were beginning to look. "You okay?" he asked.

Daniel didn't even attempt to answer.

"I'll take that as a no," Jack said.

He pretended to shrug it off as nothing, but subtly watched Daniel out of the corner of his eye for the next few minutes. He was more than a little concerned that Daniel seemed to be dragging his feet even more than he was.

When they reached the top of the hill, Daniel stopped and bent over to catch his breath. Jack eyed him warily, not at all liking what he was seeing. "Daniel..."

"I'm okay, I just... need to stop for a minute," Daniel said as he sank down onto the grass.

"Fine," Jack said, sitting down beside him. "We can stop for a minute."

Daniel looked up at the sky as he took out his canteen and drank from it. "It should be dark soon," he said.

"Yeah. You gonna make it?"

Daniel gave him a grumpy look. "Of course I'm gonna make it," he said. "Are you?"

Jack took the canteen Daniel offered him and took a swig. "Absolutely," he said as he handed it back to him.

"Great. Then let's get moving again." Daniel tried to rise to his feet, but swayed and almost fell over again before Jack moved to catch him.

"Whoa," Jack said, easing him back down onto the ground. "Looks like you need another minute there, buddy."

Daniel groaned and cradled his head in his hands. "Jack... I don't think I'm okay after all."

Jack really grew worried then.

He laid his hand gently on Daniel's shoulder to offer him some sense of comfort, but Daniel reacted as though he'd been struck. He jerked his head up and looked at Jack with wide, terrified eyes. "Apophis," he breathed, shrinking away from Jack in fear.

"Daniel, it's me," Jack said, though he knew it wouldn't make any difference what he said or did until the hallucination had played itself out.

"Oh God," Daniel whispered, looking over Jack's shoulder at some imaginary object or person. "Sha're..."

Jack almost broke down completely at the look of hopelessness and fear on Daniel's face. Thankfully, it was short lived - a moment later, Daniel fell back on the grass and lost consciousness.

"Guess the inoculation didn't work so well after all," Jack muttered. He passed a hand over his face and sighed. Suddenly he felt as though he couldn't move another inch, let alone carry Daniel all the way to the gate by himself.

He lay down on the grass and closed his eyes, defeat settling in and smothering him like a wet blanket.

To be continued...


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

It was getting dark by the time Daniel regained consciousness. Jack had finally pulled himself back onto his feet and was about to hoist Daniel over his shoulders when he saw his eyes pop open.

"Wha... where...?"

"Easy, Daniel," Jack said, crouching down and trying to soothe his friend as best he could. He remembered those first moments of disorientation when he'd woken up and found himself in a strange place full of strange people, so he knew what Daniel must be going through. "It's okay. I got you."

"Jack? What... what's happening?"

"I'll explain it all when we get home," Jack said. "Come on. Think you can walk?" When Daniel didn't respond, Jack took his arm and helped him to stand. He supported him with an arm around his middle, and although the added weight almost made his legs buckle beneath him, once again Jack found himself putting one foot in front of the other.

They somehow managed to make it down the hill without collapsing, though Daniel seemed completely spaced out and unaware of his surroundings. Jack would almost have described him as catatonic, if it weren't for the fact that his legs were moving.

"One last hill," he said with forced optimism as the ground began to slope upwards yet again. Not that he really believed it, of course. He just liked the way the words sounded.

Which is precisely why he didn't believe his eyes when he reached the top of the hill and saw the Stargate glowing in the moonlight just a short distance away.

"Daniel," he said, giving him a slight shake in the hopes that it would bring him around. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

Daniel blinked heavily and slowly turned his head from side to side. He coughed and fumbled for the hood of his robe. "Sand storm," he croaked.

Jack rolled his eyes in frustration and lowered Daniel down onto the ground. He had neither the time nor the energy to put up with Daniel's delusions right now. He had enough of his own to deal with already.

Daniel immediately curled up on the ground with his face completely hidden under his hood, in almost the exact position Jack remembered him being in when he'd fallen off the Abydonian camel as they were running from Ra.

It made Jack feel more than a little uncomfortable to watch the scene playing out before him, not only because it wasn't a particularly fond memory, but also because it was something they had _both_ experienced. He was sick and tired of going back and forth between believing Daniel was real and doubting him over and over again, but there seemed to be no escaping it.

Still, Daniel had brought him this far. He had nothing to lose by assuming it was all real and seeing it through to the end.

"Come on, Daniel," he grunted as he tried to hoist Daniel to his feet. "We're almost home."

Daniel was barely conscious by this time so he hung like a dead weight on Jack's side, but Jack didn't have the strength to carry him completely. "Just a few more steps," he kept telling himself. "Just a few more..."

He didn't question why there were no guards waiting for them at the gate. He didn't question how they had made it to exactly the right spot without the aid of a compass or a map. He just kept his eyes on the DHD and willed his legs to keep moving.

He was almost afraid to touch it once he reached his destination. He didn't know what he would do if his hand passed right through it and it disappeared. Still, he had to have faith that that was not going to happen. He dumped Daniel unceremoniously on the ground beside the DHD, closed his eyes... and reached out his hand.

His fingers touched what felt like cold stone. For a moment he feared that it was just a plain old rock, but when he cracked his eyes open again, it was still the DHD that was standing before him. He laughed out loud and clapped his hands together before rubbing them against his thighs and beginning the dialing sequence.

One chevron after another lit up before his eyes, and the Stargate began to spin. He thought he'd never seen or heard anything so beautiful in his life. It took him a few moments to find the point of origin symbol, but soon he was pressing the center crystal and watching the Stargate come to life.

He stood there staring at the event horizon for a long moment, almost hypnotized by the shimmering light. It looked so real, but some part of him was still not sure...

"Here goes nothing," he said, stooping down to grab Daniel's arms. He walked backwards towards the gate, pulling Daniel along with him. He barely had the energy to hoist him up the dais steps by his armpits, so he rested for a moment on the platform before slowly letting out his breath and pulling Daniel through the event horizon.

There was no mistaking the feeling of being broken down into a million pieces and hurled across the galaxy. And then... he was home.

Jack collapsed on the ramp as the gate shut down and half a dozen people in hazmat suits rushed towards him. Now that he'd made it, his exhaustion finally took over and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness.

It had only just registered in his mind that Daniel was nowhere in sight when everything went black.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Jack was in and out of consciousness for more than a day, sedatives keeping away the hallucinations and flashbacks so that he could finally rest.

Only he couldn't rest - not until he knew whether Daniel had made it. The question of whether or not he had come through the gate before the wormhole had shut down was constantly nagging at the back of his mind, waking and sleeping. Still, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to form the words to ask the various doctors and medical personnel who bustled in and out of his quarantine room.

Not that he could have understood their answer even if he'd been able to ask about Daniel's condition. The sedatives kept him feeling so loopy that he only caught snatches of the conversations that took place around him, and even then he couldn't retain the words long enough to figure out what the context for them may have been.

It was some time during his first night back on the base that he finally heard the word "Daniel." He forced his drifting thoughts to come together long enough that he could listen to the rest of the conversation, but all he heard was, "Sam and Teal'c are worried sick."

He was sure it was Fraiser's voice that he was hearing, so he groaned and waved a limp hand in her general direction.

That seemed to get her attention. A second later, she appeared at his side, peering out at him from inside her hazmat suit. "Colonel?" she said. "I didn't realize you were awake. How are you feeling?"

The words swam around in Jack's head for a minute before he could make sense of them, but in the meantime he waved them away with his hand. "Daniel?" he said. Or tried to say - it came out so slurred that he wasn't sure she would even be able to understand him.

She looked confused for a moment, but then she nodded and laid a gloved hand on his arm. "I'm sure you'll see him soon, Colonel. Just try to rest."

Jack wasn't sure what meaning to take from that, but he was too tired to think about it anyway. Fraiser adjusted something on his IV, and within seconds Jack was finally falling into a deep, restful sleep.

To be continued...


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

The first thing he noticed when he regained consciousness was that he had no idea what time it was. It didn't take him long to realize that this was a very good sign.

The second thing he noticed, once he cracked his eyes open, was that the quarantine curtain had been taken down. This, he knew right away, was an extremely good sign.

It wasn't until he turned his head and looked around that he noticed the third thing - he wasn't alone.

"Hey, Jack. Welcome back to the land of the living."

Jack blinked a few times to clear his eyes of the lingering blur of sleep. "Hey, Daniel," he croaked, his throat as dry as sand paper. "That really you?"

Daniel quickly got up from his chair and brought him a cup of water. After helping Jack to sit up and take a few sips, he set the cup down on the table beside Jack's bed and sat down again. "You had us worried for a while there," he said. "Janet was pretty sure this thing was some kind of brain infection that was treatable with steroids and the right kind of antibiotics, but you almost died of exhaustion before she even got the chance to try."

"It was a long trip," Jack said.

Daniel smiled and nodded. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

Jack paused to think for a moment before answering. His mind was still too foggy to fully register what he was feeling, let alone put it into words. "I've felt worse," he finally said. It was usually pretty safe to say that, considering some of the crap he'd been through. "What about you?"

"Me? I'm doing great, thanks for asking," Daniel said. "Much better now that we know you're okay."

Jack tried to roll his eyes, but it just made him dizzy. He settled for making a wry face instead. "That's sweet," he said. "But seriously... that inoculation didn't seem to do you much good back there, and you seemed just as exhausted as I was by the time we got to the gate."

Daniel gave him a blank look. "What are you talking about?" he said. "I've spent the majority of the last few days trying to negotiate your release with the town leaders."

Jack could feel the blood draining from his head as his internal organs all seemed to migrate down to his feet. "What... no... no, you were there, in the colony," he said, trying to convince himself of it as well as Daniel. "You were there, and you helped me break out!"

Daniel laughed in surprise and shook his head. "Okay, I think you need some more sleep, Jack," he said with a patronizing pat on Jack's shoulder. "I'll come back later when the drugs have had a chance to do their job."

Jack watched in dismay as Daniel turned to leave, memories of their escape running through his mind one by one as he tried to separate fact from fiction. Somehow, now that his mind was no longer playing tricks on him and he was back in familiar territory, he found he could look back on his time in the colony objectively, almost as though it had all happened to another person. He knew now what had been reality and what had been delusion... didn't he?

"Daniel," he said just as his friend was heading out the door.

Daniel stopped and turned around with a guardedly expectant look on his face.

Jack cleared his throat and swallowed convulsively. "Thank you," he said.

Daniel tilted his head and thrust his hands into his pockets. "For what?"

"For..." Jack sighed, trying to think of the right words to say. "For busting your ass to get me out of there, even though all you got in return was doubt and suspicion," he said, remembering what Daniel had said to him just before his collapse. "And for... being there. Keeping me going. Not just... in the colony, either." He sucked in a ragged breath and looked down at his hands as he forced himself to finally say what he should have said months earlier. "When you asked if you were helpful... you were. I would've given up and gone insane if you hadn't been there bugging the crap out of me, so... thank you." He gave a short nod and shot a tentative glance over at Daniel to see his reaction to this uncharacteristic speech.

Daniel seemed frozen in place for a moment, but then a slow smile spread across his face. "You're welcome," he said.

Jack let out a relieved sigh. He figured he had a right to be pissed that Daniel had messed with his mind like that, but the relief that he hadn't just been talking out of his ass trumped any anger or embarrassment that he might otherwise have felt. He finally knew for sure that it had all been real.

Daniel reached into his jacket then and pulled out a small package wrapped in colourful paper. "Here," he said, tossing it to Jack. "I figured I owed you a cheeseburger."

Jack caught it and grinned, holding it up with a nod of gratitude. He had no appetite whatsoever, but he knew that wasn't the point of it anyway - Daniel just wanted him to know that he'd not only been there, but he'd been paying attention, too.

As Daniel left the room, Jack settled back against his pillows with a contented sigh. It was damn good to be home.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Jack spent another five long, boring days in the infirmary before Fraiser finally let him leave. The most aggravating part about it was that in all that time, nobody would tell him what the hell had happened back at the colony.

Once he left his part of the infirmary, he understood why.

"We told the town leaders that their loved ones could be cured and sent home to them," Daniel told him in a low voice as he led Jack into the main ward, "but they wouldn't listen. They won't allow them back into their population, healthy or not. General Hammond is already negotiating with other worlds who are willing to take them in."

Jack gritted his teeth as he scanned the room, memories of his time in that place flooding into his mind and making him feel sick to his stomach. The people who had once looked so hopeless and filthy were now lying in comfortable cots with fresh white sheets, looking spotlessly clean and... happy. Somehow that only made him angry, knowing that they were never again going to see the people who had supposedly loved them before they were stricken with this damn disease.

"Are you okay, Jack?"

Jack blinked and cleared his throat at the sound of his name. "Yeah, fine," he said. He wasn't able to stomach the sympathetic look on Daniel's face, so he quickly stepped forward into the room and began walking slowly between the two rows of cots lining the ward, smiling and nodding at anyone who was awake as he passed.

He stopped when he thought he heard a weak voice calling his name, and turned to see Marzun lying in one of the cots to his right. Jack grinned and lifted his hand in a wave. "Hey, Marz," he said as he approached the man's bedside. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Hello, Jack," Marzun said, though his voice was so quiet and weak that Jack almost didn't hear him. "You are looking well."

"Why, thank you," Jack said good-humouredly. "I wish I could say the same about you, but you're still looking a little gray around the gills there, buddy. I'm sure you'll perk up in a day or two."

Marzun's face remained content and serene, but his reply caught Jack off-guard. "No, in a day or two I will most likely be at rest."

"At rest?" Jack repeated in a hollow voice. "But... I thought this treatment..."

"It comes too late," Marzun said.

Jack's spirits deflated like a punctured balloon. "I'm... sorry." He didn't know what else to say.

"You need not be sorry," Marzun said. "I made peace with my death long ago. I have lived to see my people cured. That is enough for me."

Jack sank down onto the edge of Marzun's bed, his lack of exercise over the past week finally catching up to him. He felt like there were lead weights on each of his limbs, but they were nothing compared to the one he felt clamping around his heart. "It's thanks to you," he said, laying a hand on Marzun's wrist and giving it a gentle squeeze. "I wouldn't have survived long enough in that place to escape if it hadn't been for you, and then there would have been no cure. You did this." He swept his arm around in a half circle to point out the three dozen other people in the ward who were healing right before their eyes. "You."

Marzun smiled, if it were possible looking even happier and more at peace than he had before. "You as well, Jack," he said. "Thank you. And thank your friends also. They have been very kind."

Jack nodded and smiled. "Will do."

"I am glad you found your friend again," Marzun said, though it seemed that every word was becoming an effort for him now.

Jack shook his head in confusion. "What friend?" he asked.

"Daniel... was his name?" Marzun said. "The friend you believed you had lost."

Jack was still confused for a second, until he remembered the hallucinations he'd had while in Marzun's quarters. He must have put two and two together from the scraps of one-sided conversations he'd heard over those few days. Jack was kind of impressed. "You were really paying attention," he said.

Marzun chuckled, and gave a slight cough. "You have experienced things that none of my people could even imagine," he said. "I watched you living out your memories with great interest."

Jack almost laughed at that, until he saw that Marzun was fading fast. "Hey, maybe I should call a doctor over here," he said, reaching over to gently fluff Marzun's pillow to make him more comfortable.

Marzun gave no indication that he'd heard Jack's comment at all. "He came to see me," he said, his voice no more than a whisper now. "Your friend. He thanked me... for caring for you... while you were in the colony."

"Yeah, Daniel's nice like that," Jack said, his hand closing softly yet firmly around Marzun's as he could see the man starting to slip away.

"The two of you remind me... of how Derya and I used to be," he continued with great effort. "Derya... Derya will be waiting for me."

"Yes, he will."

"And Daniel... Daniel is waiting for you."

Jack looked over his shoulder to see Daniel still waiting in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets as he pretended not to be watching Jack's every move. "Yes, he is," Jack said with a wry smile as he turned back to Marzun.

"Friendship... very important..." Marzun muttered as he seemed to be drifting off to sleep. "Always... take care... of each other."

Jack sighed and lowered his head in respect as Marzun let go of his last breath. "We always will," he said.

He knew now more than ever that it was true.

The End


End file.
